Medicare -- signed into law fifty years ago, on July 30, 1965 -- was supposed to be just the first step.

For the fifty years before Medicare's enactment, progressives had fought unsuccessfully for universal, government-provided health insurance. In 1912, President Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party platform advocated universal, government-sponsored, health insurance, but he was defeated in his quest for another term as president. In 1917, the California legislature approved universal health insurance, and the governor supported it, but a 1918 ballot resolution defeated the measure after a massive, well-financed business and physician-fueled campaign against it. President Franklin Roosevelt seriously considered including national health insurance in his 1935 Social Security legislation, but decided against it out of fear that it would bring down the entire legislative package. President Harry Truman made universal health insurance a top priority, but got nowhere.

The five-decade long history of defeat convinced activists to shift to an incremental approach. They decided to start with a sympathetic group and debated which one that should be. The top candidates were seniors and children. On the one hand, covering children was relatively inexpensive and could lead to a lifetime of better health. On the other hand, seniors were most in need of health insurance and were already used to and supportive of Social Security's government-sponsored wage insurance. And they voted.

So the decision was made to start with them. The expectation was that, after Medicare was enacted, children and others would be quickly added. And, indeed, just seven years later, in 1972, President Richard Nixon signed into law legislation which extended Medicare to people with serious and permanent disabilities.

But then came Watergate, distrust of government, and President Ronald Reagan's famous declaration, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Expansion of Medicare to children or other demographic groups disappeared from the public agenda. But the need for universal high-quality health care, efficiently provided, did not.

Conservatives and centrist Democrats, increasingly in control, looked for alternative approaches. Inclined toward private sector solutions but recognizing that some limited government role was essential, they favored private sector health insurance and savings supported by favorable tax treatment. For those who fell through the cracks and who were deemed worthy, they favored means-tested health insurance provided at the state level, with federal support.

Those are the solutions that have dominated since 1972, despite the obvious advantages of simply expanding Medicare. Means-tested Medicaid, included in the same 1965 legislation that enacted Medicare, was expanded every few years, most recently as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The means-tested State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was enacted in 1997. And, the Affordable Care Act authorized state exchanges offering private health insurance subsidized with income-tested, government subsidies. During these decades, the tax expenditure on health care insurance grew from the fourth largest tax expenditure in 1986 to the largest today -- at a loss of revenue of over $200 billion a year. And during this same period, conservatives amended Medicare to include private health insurance and means-tested elements.

But these methods of providing health insurance are vastly inferior to universal, government-sponsored health insurance -- essentially, Medicare for All. Universal, government-sponsored insurance is the most effective and efficient way to cover everyone. Insurance is least expensive when it covers the most people; the large size of government-sponsored health insurance provides economies of scale and the greatest ability to negotiate over prices and control costs. Moreover, unlike private health insurance, a government plan has no marketing costs and no high CEO salaries. It can provide health care less expensively and more efficiently for everyone. For these reasons, every other industrialized country provides universal coverage, spends less as a percentage of GDP, and produces better health outcomes.

But we don't have to look to other countries to see the advantages. Medicare covers seniors and people with disabilities, people who, on average, have the worst health and the most expensive medical conditions, requiring the largest numbers of doctor and hospital visits with the concomitant largest number of health care claims. Yet, Medicare's administrative costs are the lowest around. Medicaid, whose administrative costs vary from state to state, is less efficient than Medicare, because its coverage is statewide, not national, and it must impose complicated and expensive means testing, Even with that, both Medicare and Medicaid are significantly more efficient than private health insurance. Compared to Medicare's administrative costs of just 1.4 percent, the administrative costs of private health insurance sponsored by very small firms or purchased by individuals can run as high as 30 percent. Even the administrative costs of health insurance sponsored by large companies typically run around 7 percent.

As a stark illustration of the greater efficiency and effectiveness of Medicare, a proposal floated a few years ago to raise Medicare's initial age of eligibility from 65 to 67 -- requiring people to wait two additional years before they could enroll in Medicare -- would have resulted in increased health care costs for the nation as a whole of $5.7 billion a year and increased premium costs for both Medicare and all other health insurance of about 3 percent. Just as shrinking Medicare's coverage increases costs, expanding coverage would reduce overall health care costs

Imagine if President Bill Clinton in 1993 and President Barack Obama in 2009 had followed the direction of the architects of Medicare, a half century ago. Imagine if they had proposed incremental expansions of Medicare, including lowering the Medicare age to 62 or 55, creating a counterpart universal, government-sponsored Medikidsprogram, covering under Medicare people with pre-existing conditions, and providing all Americans the option of buying into Medicare. We likely would be on our way to Medicare for All, with all of its advantages. We likely would be forecasting long-termsurpluses in our federal budget, with all that would mean for greater spending on other pressing needs. Our businesses would be much more competitive. And we would join other nations in recognizing health care as a human right.

But it is not too late.

This upcoming presidential election could be a powerful defining moment. It could get us back on track to realizing the vision of the architects of Medicare a half century ago. Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) believes in Medicare for All, as well as expansion of Social Security. In contrast, Governor Jeb Bush is calling for the phasing out of Medicare and wants to cut Social Security. If each Party's platform reflects these views, the American people will have a clear choice.

I see no better way to celebrate Medicare reaching its fiftieth anniversary than to expand Medicare. If we follow the lead of those visionary architects fifty years ago, those who come after us will inherit a nation where affordable, first class health insurance -- Medicare for All -- is a birthright.

Medicare -- signed into law fifty years ago, on July 30, 1965 -- was supposed to be just the first step.

For the fifty years before Medicare's enactment, progressives had fought unsuccessfully for universal, government-provided health insurance. In 1912, President Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party platform advocated universal, government-sponsored, health insurance, but he was defeated in his quest for another term as president. In 1917, the California legislature approved universal health insurance, and the governor supported it, but a 1918 ballot resolution defeated the measure after a massive, well-financed business and physician-fueled campaign against it. President Franklin Roosevelt seriously considered including national health insurance in his 1935 Social Security legislation, but decided against it out of fear that it would bring down the entire legislative package. President Harry Truman made universal health insurance a top priority, but got nowhere.

The five-decade long history of defeat convinced activists to shift to an incremental approach. They decided to start with a sympathetic group and debated which one that should be. The top candidates were seniors and children. On the one hand, covering children was relatively inexpensive and could lead to a lifetime of better health. On the other hand, seniors were most in need of health insurance and were already used to and supportive of Social Security's government-sponsored wage insurance. And they voted.

So the decision was made to start with them. The expectation was that, after Medicare was enacted, children and others would be quickly added. And, indeed, just seven years later, in 1972, President Richard Nixon signed into law legislation which extended Medicare to people with serious and permanent disabilities.

But then came Watergate, distrust of government, and President Ronald Reagan's famous declaration, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Expansion of Medicare to children or other demographic groups disappeared from the public agenda. But the need for universal high-quality health care, efficiently provided, did not.

Conservatives and centrist Democrats, increasingly in control, looked for alternative approaches. Inclined toward private sector solutions but recognizing that some limited government role was essential, they favored private sector health insurance and savings supported by favorable tax treatment. For those who fell through the cracks and who were deemed worthy, they favored means-tested health insurance provided at the state level, with federal support.

Those are the solutions that have dominated since 1972, despite the obvious advantages of simply expanding Medicare. Means-tested Medicaid, included in the same 1965 legislation that enacted Medicare, was expanded every few years, most recently as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The means-tested State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was enacted in 1997. And, the Affordable Care Act authorized state exchanges offering private health insurance subsidized with income-tested, government subsidies. During these decades, the tax expenditure on health care insurance grew from the fourth largest tax expenditure in 1986 to the largest today -- at a loss of revenue of over $200 billion a year. And during this same period, conservatives amended Medicare to include private health insurance and means-tested elements.

But these methods of providing health insurance are vastly inferior to universal, government-sponsored health insurance -- essentially, Medicare for All. Universal, government-sponsored insurance is the most effective and efficient way to cover everyone. Insurance is least expensive when it covers the most people; the large size of government-sponsored health insurance provides economies of scale and the greatest ability to negotiate over prices and control costs. Moreover, unlike private health insurance, a government plan has no marketing costs and no high CEO salaries. It can provide health care less expensively and more efficiently for everyone. For these reasons, every other industrialized country provides universal coverage, spends less as a percentage of GDP, and produces better health outcomes.

But we don't have to look to other countries to see the advantages. Medicare covers seniors and people with disabilities, people who, on average, have the worst health and the most expensive medical conditions, requiring the largest numbers of doctor and hospital visits with the concomitant largest number of health care claims. Yet, Medicare's administrative costs are the lowest around. Medicaid, whose administrative costs vary from state to state, is less efficient than Medicare, because its coverage is statewide, not national, and it must impose complicated and expensive means testing, Even with that, both Medicare and Medicaid are significantly more efficient than private health insurance. Compared to Medicare's administrative costs of just 1.4 percent, the administrative costs of private health insurance sponsored by very small firms or purchased by individuals can run as high as 30 percent. Even the administrative costs of health insurance sponsored by large companies typically run around 7 percent.

As a stark illustration of the greater efficiency and effectiveness of Medicare, a proposal floated a few years ago to raise Medicare's initial age of eligibility from 65 to 67 -- requiring people to wait two additional years before they could enroll in Medicare -- would have resulted in increased health care costs for the nation as a whole of $5.7 billion a year and increased premium costs for both Medicare and all other health insurance of about 3 percent. Just as shrinking Medicare's coverage increases costs, expanding coverage would reduce overall health care costs

Imagine if President Bill Clinton in 1993 and President Barack Obama in 2009 had followed the direction of the architects of Medicare, a half century ago. Imagine if they had proposed incremental expansions of Medicare, including lowering the Medicare age to 62 or 55, creating a counterpart universal, government-sponsored Medikidsprogram, covering under Medicare people with pre-existing conditions, and providing all Americans the option of buying into Medicare. We likely would be on our way to Medicare for All, with all of its advantages. We likely would be forecasting long-termsurpluses in our federal budget, with all that would mean for greater spending on other pressing needs. Our businesses would be much more competitive. And we would join other nations in recognizing health care as a human right.

But it is not too late.

This upcoming presidential election could be a powerful defining moment. It could get us back on track to realizing the vision of the architects of Medicare a half century ago. Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) believes in Medicare for All, as well as expansion of Social Security. In contrast, Governor Jeb Bush is calling for the phasing out of Medicare and wants to cut Social Security. If each Party's platform reflects these views, the American people will have a clear choice.

I see no better way to celebrate Medicare reaching its fiftieth anniversary than to expand Medicare. If we follow the lead of those visionary architects fifty years ago, those who come after us will inherit a nation where affordable, first class health insurance -- Medicare for All -- is a birthright.

Typically when a Republican politician who opposes immigration reform is asked what he or she would do with the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., they usually give a non-answer or avoid the question altogether.

But Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, a former official with the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, is at least giving an honest answer, telling conservative radio host John Fredericks yesterdaythat Trump wants to deport the 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants living here.

“You guys are going to be committed to basically rounding anyone who is here illegally, rounding them up, and sending them back?” Fredericks asked.

“Yes, that’s right,” Lewandowski replied, before going on to claim that there may be upwards of 30 million undocumented immigrants in the country, a bogus figure that has previously been cited by Trump. Lewandowski, sounding just like Trump, said that undocumented immigrants are killing American citizens” and that a President Trump would build an “impenetrable” border wall: “It doesn’t matter how much water you have in your boat if you don’t stop the water from coming in you are eventually going to sink, so the first thing to do is to plug the hole, and that’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to build a wall that stops that from continuing.”

He then channeled Mitt Romney by talking about the need for “self-deportation” by making their lives difficult in the U.S. “We’re going to deport everybody and then you have the opportunity to apply to an expedited process,” he said.

Amazingly, as we noted earlier today, even with his campaign making statements like this, Trump is still not seen as extreme enough in his anti-immigrant politics by Numbers USA, the most influential anti-immigrant lobbying group. This is because Trump, although he wants to deport all of the undocumented immigrants in the country, has vaguely hinted at offering an “expedited” process for the “good” ones to apply to return. And remember, back in 2012 Trump was calling Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” stance “crazy.”

"He had a crazy policy of self-deportation, which was maniacal," Trump told Newsmax. "It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote." Trump added that the GOP should develop better policies "with respect to people wanting to be wonderful, productive citizens of this country."

Typically when a Republican politician who opposes immigration reform is asked what he or she would do with the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., they usually give a non-answer or avoid the question altogether.

But Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, a former official with the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, is at least giving an honest answer, telling conservative radio host John Fredericks yesterdaythat Trump wants to deport the 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants living here.

“You guys are going to be committed to basically rounding anyone who is here illegally, rounding them up, and sending them back?” Fredericks asked.

“Yes, that’s right,” Lewandowski replied, before going on to claim that there may be upwards of 30 million undocumented immigrants in the country, a bogus figure that has previously been cited by Trump. Lewandowski, sounding just like Trump, said that undocumented immigrants are killing American citizens” and that a President Trump would build an “impenetrable” border wall: “It doesn’t matter how much water you have in your boat if you don’t stop the water from coming in you are eventually going to sink, so the first thing to do is to plug the hole, and that’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to build a wall that stops that from continuing.”

He then channeled Mitt Romney by talking about the need for “self-deportation” by making their lives difficult in the U.S. “We’re going to deport everybody and then you have the opportunity to apply to an expedited process,” he said.

Amazingly, as we noted earlier today, even with his campaign making statements like this, Trump is still not seen as extreme enough in his anti-immigrant politics by Numbers USA, the most influential anti-immigrant lobbying group. This is because Trump, although he wants to deport all of the undocumented immigrants in the country, has vaguely hinted at offering an “expedited” process for the “good” ones to apply to return. And remember, back in 2012 Trump was calling Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” stance “crazy.”

"He had a crazy policy of self-deportation, which was maniacal," Trump told Newsmax. "It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote." Trump added that the GOP should develop better policies "with respect to people wanting to be wonderful, productive citizens of this country."

Money is everything for people like Donald Trump, Mitt Romney and Carly Fiorina.

Donald Trump says exactly what the GOP believes. It’s a simple axiom: personal wealth accumulation is everything. Republican Party officials believe individuals like The Donald attain riches through their own guts, glory and gumption with not an iota of aid from community, country or, frankly, inherited wealth.

It’s just that when The Donald expresses their credo, he ignores the shinola and emphasizes the crass. Instead of going with the slick 2012 GOP convention theme, “I built that,” to aggrandize individual capitalist conquest, The Donald slammed a group of his primary competitors for serving their nation instead of themselves.

What The Donald failed to acknowledge is that some of them, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, serve themselves through their so-called public service. This year, for example, Walker took a quarter billion dollars from Wisconsin higher education, gave it instead to a project by billionaire sports team owners to construct a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks, and now one of those rich guys, Jon Hammes, co-chairs Walker’s national campaign fund raising.

It’s a brilliant scam. The Donald, master of bankruptcies with four under his belt, really should be impressed. Walker is forcing the great majority of Wisconsin workers to pay taxes, not for projects they prize like schools or highways, but instead to further enrich millionaires who, in turn, fill Walker’s campaign pockets!

The Donald elevates capitalist endeavors, even those achieved through bankruptcy, over public service, suggesting non-millionaires are unqualified for office: “A number of my competitors for the Republican nomination have no business running for president. . . . Many are failed politicians or people who would be unable to succeed in the private sector.”

This echoes the derisive comments the previous Republican nominee for President, the quarter billionaire Mitt Romney, made about American people generally. He slammed nearly half of them, 47 percent, as slackers who receive government aid after they failed to be born to a famous rich man, as Romney was, and then leverage that silver spoon to make millions for themselves. Never mind that many of the 47 percent receive Social Security that they earned through a lifetime of hard work. Never mind that guys like Jon Hammes fatten their already bulging wallets with government handouts.

A specific “failed politician” that The Donald blasted was U.S. Sen. John McCain. The Arizona Republican, who suffers to this day from injuries he endured as a prisoner of war, didn’t defeat Barack Obama for the presidency. So The Donald called McCain a loser, a person who The Donald would fire, in fact, according to The Donald, not even a war hero.

My union, the United Steelworkers, supported Barack Obama for President and agrees with John McCain on virtually no policy issue. Ever. It is, however, without question that McCain responded honorably to the call of duty for his country and sacrificed incalculably for that.

Despite McCain’s achievements as a soldier and a senator, The Donald felt entitled to belittle him as “incapable of doing anything” because he didn’t make millions by demanding rent money from impoverished tenants, as The Donald launched his career doing, or saddling unqualified couples with subprime mortgages by falsifying their application documents or gambling as a Wall Street banker and helping crash the economy.

Money is everything for politicians like Trump and Romney and GOP candidate Carly Fiorina, who laid off 30,000 workers when she ran Hewlett-Packard then stuffed a $40 million golden parachute in her purse before leaving the ailing firm. For them, individual schemes to accrue cash are paramount. And the amount of dough collected is the true measure of a man. Or woman.

It may come as a surprise, then, to these self-aggrandizing capitalists that most Americans don’t believe human greatness is the sum of private jets and mega yachts bought with profits made on the backs of furloughed workers. And particularly relevant to politicians who evangelize careless Randian capitalism in the Bible belt is a recent poll that found the values of the faithful to be the antithesis of money worship.

Lake Research Partners released a survey last week of likely 2016 voters who are religious or faith affiliated. It found that devout voters reject the Republican concept that individuals build businesses by themselves and that every citizen must struggle alone in society competing for survival against neighbors and work mates. They rebuffed a culture based on the Donald Trump reality show The Apprentice – where contestants stomp each other to get ahead.

Instead, these religious voters believe in community where members sustain and strengthen each other. They expressed strong support for policies that inure to the collective good including paid sick leave, increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour and investment in children even if that means raising taxes.

This, frankly, is not a surprising finding in a religious country that is a closely bound collection of states. Citizens of the United States have found that they can achieve far more through affiliation and cooperation. No individual state, not even the big ones like Texas or California or New York, could have won World War II. But 50 states together, with young people volunteering for military service and women stepping up to work in factories and old people buying war bonds, generated the synergistic power of community essential for victory.

Republicans who denigrate those values do so at their own peril. Americans aren’t selfish. They don’t live by The Apprentice theme song, “For the Love of Money.” Americans are better than that. And they deserve better than mean-spirited, self-serving politicians.

Money is everything for people like Donald Trump, Mitt Romney and Carly Fiorina.

Donald Trump says exactly what the GOP believes. It’s a simple axiom: personal wealth accumulation is everything. Republican Party officials believe individuals like The Donald attain riches through their own guts, glory and gumption with not an iota of aid from community, country or, frankly, inherited wealth.

It’s just that when The Donald expresses their credo, he ignores the shinola and emphasizes the crass. Instead of going with the slick 2012 GOP convention theme, “I built that,” to aggrandize individual capitalist conquest, The Donald slammed a group of his primary competitors for serving their nation instead of themselves.

What The Donald failed to acknowledge is that some of them, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, serve themselves through their so-called public service. This year, for example, Walker took a quarter billion dollars from Wisconsin higher education, gave it instead to a project by billionaire sports team owners to construct a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks, and now one of those rich guys, Jon Hammes, co-chairs Walker’s national campaign fund raising.

It’s a brilliant scam. The Donald, master of bankruptcies with four under his belt, really should be impressed. Walker is forcing the great majority of Wisconsin workers to pay taxes, not for projects they prize like schools or highways, but instead to further enrich millionaires who, in turn, fill Walker’s campaign pockets!

The Donald elevates capitalist endeavors, even those achieved through bankruptcy, over public service, suggesting non-millionaires are unqualified for office: “A number of my competitors for the Republican nomination have no business running for president. . . . Many are failed politicians or people who would be unable to succeed in the private sector.”

This echoes the derisive comments the previous Republican nominee for President, the quarter billionaire Mitt Romney, made about American people generally. He slammed nearly half of them, 47 percent, as slackers who receive government aid after they failed to be born to a famous rich man, as Romney was, and then leverage that silver spoon to make millions for themselves. Never mind that many of the 47 percent receive Social Security that they earned through a lifetime of hard work. Never mind that guys like Jon Hammes fatten their already bulging wallets with government handouts.

A specific “failed politician” that The Donald blasted was U.S. Sen. John McCain. The Arizona Republican, who suffers to this day from injuries he endured as a prisoner of war, didn’t defeat Barack Obama for the presidency. So The Donald called McCain a loser, a person who The Donald would fire, in fact, according to The Donald, not even a war hero.

My union, the United Steelworkers, supported Barack Obama for President and agrees with John McCain on virtually no policy issue. Ever. It is, however, without question that McCain responded honorably to the call of duty for his country and sacrificed incalculably for that.

Despite McCain’s achievements as a soldier and a senator, The Donald felt entitled to belittle him as “incapable of doing anything” because he didn’t make millions by demanding rent money from impoverished tenants, as The Donald launched his career doing, or saddling unqualified couples with subprime mortgages by falsifying their application documents or gambling as a Wall Street banker and helping crash the economy.

Money is everything for politicians like Trump and Romney and GOP candidate Carly Fiorina, who laid off 30,000 workers when she ran Hewlett-Packard then stuffed a $40 million golden parachute in her purse before leaving the ailing firm. For them, individual schemes to accrue cash are paramount. And the amount of dough collected is the true measure of a man. Or woman.

It may come as a surprise, then, to these self-aggrandizing capitalists that most Americans don’t believe human greatness is the sum of private jets and mega yachts bought with profits made on the backs of furloughed workers. And particularly relevant to politicians who evangelize careless Randian capitalism in the Bible belt is a recent poll that found the values of the faithful to be the antithesis of money worship.

Lake Research Partners released a survey last week of likely 2016 voters who are religious or faith affiliated. It found that devout voters reject the Republican concept that individuals build businesses by themselves and that every citizen must struggle alone in society competing for survival against neighbors and work mates. They rebuffed a culture based on the Donald Trump reality show The Apprentice – where contestants stomp each other to get ahead.

Instead, these religious voters believe in community where members sustain and strengthen each other. They expressed strong support for policies that inure to the collective good including paid sick leave, increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour and investment in children even if that means raising taxes.

This, frankly, is not a surprising finding in a religious country that is a closely bound collection of states. Citizens of the United States have found that they can achieve far more through affiliation and cooperation. No individual state, not even the big ones like Texas or California or New York, could have won World War II. But 50 states together, with young people volunteering for military service and women stepping up to work in factories and old people buying war bonds, generated the synergistic power of community essential for victory.

Republicans who denigrate those values do so at their own peril. Americans aren’t selfish. They don’t live by The Apprentice theme song, “For the Love of Money.” Americans are better than that. And they deserve better than mean-spirited, self-serving politicians.

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/buying-america-many-astounding-ways-you-can-express-your-values-your-pocket-bookBuying America: The Many Astounding Ways You Can Express Your Values with Your Pocket Bookhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/103650352/0/alternet_labor~Buying-America-The-Many-Astounding-Ways-You-Can-Express-Your-Values-with-Your-Pocket-Book

Shopping can be an ethical act.

“Every person ought to have the awareness that purchasing is always a moral – and not simply an economic – act,” Pope Francis announced early this year. How can we spend our money as if our values matter?

In some sectors and for some values this is fairly easy. Food is an obvious example. Those who want to protect the environment and human and animal health will find abundant labels guiding them to the appropriate product: USDA Organic, free range, hormone free, grass fed. For those who want to strengthen community, shrink the distance between producer and consumer and support family farmers a growing number of grocery stores label locally grown or raised.

For those who want to support farmworkers as well as farmers, however, little guidance is available. The recently launched Equitable Food Initiative and Food Justice Certified labels hope to fill this gap. The former identifies food that has been harvested by workers paid a fair wage and laboring under safe and fair conditions. The latter offers three tiers of certification covering farm, processor and vendor/retailer. Only farms have been certified.

As for grocery stores, we can easily identify those cooperatively or locally owned. Going one step further along the supply chain we can use the Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC)’s Diners Guide to Ethical Eating downloadable app to identify restaurants that treat their workers well. Extra credit is given to non-chain businesses. To earn a favorable rating the restaurant must pay its non-tipped workers at least $10 an hour and tipped staff at least $7 an hour, grant all employees paid sick days and enable internal promotion.

The ethical consumer who wants to patronize a locally owned retail store in general can visit Independent We Stand and download its mobile app. Or go to AMIBA and BALLE to find a list of independent business alliances in over 100 cities many of which have hundreds and even thousands of individual member businesses.

There are few guides to locally and rooted manufacturers. But 3-year-old San Francisco Made offers an excellent model, interconnecting and nurturing its 325 member manufacturers located in that city.

The vast majority of products we purchase will come from regional and national firms. One can easily check to see if the company is American and sometimes that will be necessary even when we think we know from the product’s name what nationality the company is. As Roger Simmermaker, author of How Americans Can Buy American and My Country ‘Tis of Thee points out, "Swiss Miss is American (based in Menomonie, Wisconsin) and Carnation is owned by the Swiss."

For those who want to go beyond where a company is headquartered to who owns it, a list of companies owned by their employees is available from the National Center for Employee Ownership.

Finding American made products as opposed to American corporations requires more legwork. Almost 8 in 10 American consumers say they prefer to buy American made products according to Consumer Reports. (Another survey found that for Americans ages 18-34 the percentage drops to 4 in 10.) Patriotic buying has gained considerable cache in the last few years and is beginning to change corporate behavior.

Consider this story of Florida orange juice. In 2007 Pepsi and then Coke began to mix oranges from other countries with Florida oranges. Florida’s Natural, an agricultural cooperative owned by 1100 growers, whose motto is "we own the land, we own the trees, we own the company" added a logo to its packages sporting an American flag and the words “Product of U.S.A.” For a few years Pepsi and Coke thought price would trump homegrown but in early 2012 the Tropicana Products division of PepsiCo began to proclaim in print ads, “Grown, picked and squeezed in Florida,” (Florida’s Natural responded with its own new tag line: “All Florida. Never imported. Who can say that?”)

A 2013 survey of more than 200 U.S.-based investors interested in the luxury sector, found 80 percent of them concerned that the reputational risk associated with offshore manufacturing is beginning to offset the cost savings for luxury goods manufacturers. After Ralph Lauren proudly unveiled its new uniforms for the U.S. team for the 2012 summer Olympics it was discovered that every piece of the uniform was made overseas. A considerable public backlash led the company to promise to make the U.S. uniforms for the 2014 Winter Games from USA components.

Mitch Cahn, the CEO of Unionwear, a Newark, New Jersey clothing manufacturer told John Oliver about why both Democratic and Republican candidates buy his company’s hats. “Both want to demonstrate their commitment to made in USA. Plus, whenever one of their vendors messes up and sources something from overseas or switches. When they get caught, which they invariably will, it’s going to cost them so much more money to fix the problem, backpedal, apologize, change their message, that it’s easier and cheaper to just patronize clean shops.”

Finding out if a product is made in the United States is easy. All imports must carry country of origin information on the outside of the package. Finding domestic products that are largely made of domestic components, however, may be more challenging.

How American Is That American Product?

Even if we buy American made how much of the value of the product is actually made in America? For automobiles, textiles, wool and fur products the law requires disclosure of the percentage of a product's domestically produced content.

The 1994 American Automobile Labeling Act (AALA) requires all automobiles and trucks to prominently display a sticker showing the percentage of its value made in the United States. The AALA has several shortcomings. For one, it does not distinguish between Canadian and U.S. production. It does not take into account where the profits go (e.g. is the company foreign owned). Finally, it allows the “content percentages to be calculated on a "carline" basis rather than for each individual vehicle and may be rounded to the nearest 5 percent.”

The more sophisticated Kogod Made in America Auto Index, released annually by American University incorporates the (AALA) but adds seven further criteria: site of body, chassis, and electrical parts manufacturing (50 percent); site of engine production (14 percent); site of inventory and capital expense allocation (11 percent); site of transmission production (7 percent); site of assembly labor (6 percent); site of research and development (6 percent); and finally, where the profits in each aspect of the transaction go (6 percent).

In 2014 the Ford F-150 truck, the best selling vehicle in America topped the Kogod charts with 87.5 points out of 100.

As a general rule, automakers are more likely to build larger vehicles with higher profit margins in the U.S. and smaller ones overseas. The Kogod index seems to bear this out. The F-150 and Chevy Silverado score in the 80’s while the Chevy Spark and Ford Fiesta have scores of 15.5 and 19.5 respectively.

Aside from cars and textiles and furs, no U.S. supplier needs to identify where the product is made or its components. But if the company boasts that a product is “Made in the USA” or “Made in America” it must “contain no - or negligible - foreign content" according to regulations issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the product's final assembly or processing must take place in the United States.

Nevertheless, the buyer who sees a Made in America sticker must still beware. The FTC investigates several complaints a year, almost all submitted by manufacturing competitors and the vast majority end in a settlement with no civil penalty. The civil penalties themselves are modest. California has its own higher and more rigidly enforced standard. No component of a product advertised as Made in the USA can be imported. In 2011 California’s Supreme Court ruled that the company Kwikset could be sued for using the label on one of its locks because the screws in it were manufactured in Mexico.

Americans don’t like to be misled by faux patriotic corporate advertising. As Consumer Reports notes, “Readers who have sent us complaints seem most irritated by foreign-made products whose makers have patriotic names (American Mills, Americana Olives, Great American Seafood, United States Sweaters, the U.S. Lock company) or whose packages have flag-waving slogans (“true American quality”) or symbols (pictures of the flag, eagle, Statue of Liberty).”

Over 90 percent of shoes and clothing sold in the United States is imported. One will almost always pay more to purchase Made in the USA but often their quality is far superior. If you buy a Brooks Brothers suit, 70% of which are made in Massachusetts, or tie, 100% of which are made in New York or shirt, 15% of which are made in North Carolina the quality is first rate and the clothes last considerably longer than cheaper imported items.

More than 97 percent of American denim jeans are made abroad but you can still find American made denim. In the 1990s Lawson Nickol was working for a U.S. jeans manufacturer who like almost all other jean manufacturers decided to move production to China. He resigned and in 2002 with his son BJ Nickol founded the All American Clothing Co. They started manufacturing their own clothing in 2007. Unique among jeans manufacturers, their customers can enter a code and trace their jeans back to the farm that grew the cotton.

One of the new firm’s biggest challenges was finding suppliers. "The apparel industry has lost 85 percent of cut and sew people in the USA since 2002 when China became king”, Nickol notes. He’s had to pay more for their materials and labor which makes their clothes more expensive which Lawson concedes but proudly adds, “…I buy a lot of higher cost products that are made in the USA in order to support tax base, jobs, SSN, police, firemen, hospitals, infrastructure, military, freedom, etc, etc. I don’t buy foreign jeans and help to support labor atrocities, child labor, poor manufacturing quality, give money to the foreign governments…”

Despite higher input costs his jeans prices are still competitive with denim giants like Levis. Why? “One of the things we don’t do a lot of is marketing and advertising,” says Nickol. American Clothing sells 95 percent of its products online. Nickol adds, “We don’t have as big of margins.”

Sluggish wages in the United States and soaring labor costs in countries like China, coupled with the growing realization of the costs inherent in the rigidity of long supply chains and the potential for product piracy, has made it increasingly possible to buy American in many sectors. Whirlpool already makes 80 percent of the products it sells in the U.S in its U.S. plants and it prices them competitively. In 2000, it manufactured most of its front-loading washers in Germany. Now the company is moving that production back to its Ohio-based facilities. “On the one hand, U.S. labor costs are often higher than in other countries,” says Whirlpool’s Casey Tubman. “But when you look at the higher productivity for American workers and consider the fact that it’s very expensive to ship something as big as a refrigerator or washer, we can quickly make up those costs.”

There are several useful web sites that identify American made products. (Look here, here, here, here, and here.)

Going Beyond Buy America

The same Consumer Reports 2013 survey that found that 78 percent of us prefer to buy American products also found that other values were equally or more important to us. Ninety-two percent preferred products from companies that give back to the local community; 90 percent preferred companies that treat their workers well; 82 percent prefer firms that express public support for causes we believe; 79 percent prefer a company that engages in environmentally friendly practices.

If you are one of the 90 percent who care how companies you want to buy from treat their workers one good indicator is whether the product is made with union labor. For clothing you can look for the UNITE label (the union created from the merger of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union). Those seeking to buy a specific car made by union members can find a list here. Those seeking web sites that offer extensive links to union made products can go here and here.

Those wanting to know more generally about the character of the company with whom they are doing business can check out whether it is a Benefit Corporation. This new type of corporation is required to consider its impact not only on shareholders but also on workers, community, and the environment. Benefit corporations are required to make available to the public an annual benefit report that assesses their overall social and environmental performance against a third party standard. Twenty-eight states currently permit a corporation to become a Benefit Corporation. A list of Benefit Corporations by state is available here.

For example, in 2014 King Arthur Flour and New Belgium were among the top rated B Corporations on labor issues. The 200 year old King Arthur, a company of 388 workers at the busiest times of the year, has a minimum hourly starting wage for full-time workers of $11.25 an hour. New Belgium's lowest wage for non-temporary workers is $12 an hour. King Arthur Flour and New Belgium are 100 percent employee-owned companies. Both have profit sharing plans. At King Arthur Flour low income employees receive a heavily subsidized Community Supported Agriculture shares.

As Stephen Lurie at Vox observes, despite its high rating, King Arthur Flour puts its USDA organic label on the front of its packages and its B Logo on the back.

Assessing the character of a company is complicated and by its nature incomplete. Some might want to know how willing companies are to pay their fair share of taxes to sustain our public schools and roads and colleges. In 2015 Bloomberg compiled a directory of 299 companies detailing how much of their total profits they’ve stashed abroad to avoid taxes. Bizvizz has an ambitious but spotty downloadable app allows you to use your phone to take a picture of a brand and discover what tax rate the corporation that makes the product pays and in many cases, where its political contributions go.

Often those who want to make ethical purchases will have to assess which of the values they embrace are more important. For example, what do we buy when the organic farm treats its workers poorly? Would you choose a conventional tomato picked by well-treated workers than a local heirloom variety harvested by oppressed workers as the food writer and activist Eric Schlosser declared he would? Or would you choose the tomato that stresses the environment? A Toyota Camry is among those vehicles with the highest percentage of its components coming from the United States. But its plants are not unionized and the company’s profits do not stay in the United States.

With much fanfare Walmart has launched a new Buy America initiative. Would you now shop there given that Walmart’s policies may have single-handedly resulted in the outsourcing of hundreds of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs and the erosion of U.S. workers wages? Or that more than 20 years ago it launched a similar campaign and began hanging “Made in America” signs in its 750 stores until NBC’s Dateline offered significant evidence the initiative was “more an advertising gimmick than a substantial plan.” At the beginning of its current initiative Walmart publicized a contract with 1888 Mills, a Georgia towel maker to produce American-made towels for the company’s stores. But 1888 Mills, which has an overseas workforce of some 14,000, will be adding only 35 jobs low paid jobs at its U.S. factory to meet Walmart’s multi-year purchase agreement.

Sometimes different values can lead customers to the same supplier. As I noted above, both Democrats and Republicans buy their caps from Unionwear in election years to demonstrate their support for domestic jobs. John Oliver calls it “electoral jingoism”. But CEO Mitch Cahn points out one key difference between the political parties on their values beyond domestic sourcing, “Democrats brag about their products being union made and the republican don’t want anyone to find out about it.”

Sometimes an ethical purchasing decision is easy. Sometimes it is hard, challenging us to do the homework necessary to put our money where our values are. Sometimes it requires us to choose which values are primary. You pays your money and you makes your choice.

“Every person ought to have the awareness that purchasing is always a moral – and not simply an economic – act,” Pope Francis announced early this year. How can we spend our money as if our values matter?

In some sectors and for some values this is fairly easy. Food is an obvious example. Those who want to protect the environment and human and animal health will find abundant labels guiding them to the appropriate product: USDA Organic, free range, hormone free, grass fed. For those who want to strengthen community, shrink the distance between producer and consumer and support family farmers a growing number of grocery stores label locally grown or raised.

For those who want to support farmworkers as well as farmers, however, little guidance is available. The recently launched Equitable Food Initiative and Food Justice Certified labels hope to fill this gap. The former identifies food that has been harvested by workers paid a fair wage and laboring under safe and fair conditions. The latter offers three tiers of certification covering farm, processor and vendor/retailer. Only farms have been certified.

As for grocery stores, we can easily identify those cooperatively or locally owned. Going one step further along the supply chain we can use the Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC)’s Diners Guide to Ethical Eating downloadable app to identify restaurants that treat their workers well. Extra credit is given to non-chain businesses. To earn a favorable rating the restaurant must pay its non-tipped workers at least $10 an hour and tipped staff at least $7 an hour, grant all employees paid sick days and enable internal promotion.

The ethical consumer who wants to patronize a locally owned retail store in general can visit Independent We Stand and download its mobile app. Or go to AMIBA and BALLE to find a list of independent business alliances in over 100 cities many of which have hundreds and even thousands of individual member businesses.

There are few guides to locally and rooted manufacturers. But 3-year-old San Francisco Made offers an excellent model, interconnecting and nurturing its 325 member manufacturers located in that city.

The vast majority of products we purchase will come from regional and national firms. One can easily check to see if the company is American and sometimes that will be necessary even when we think we know from the product’s name what nationality the company is. As Roger Simmermaker, author of How Americans Can Buy American and My Country ‘Tis of Thee points out, "Swiss Miss is American (based in Menomonie, Wisconsin) and Carnation is owned by the Swiss."

For those who want to go beyond where a company is headquartered to who owns it, a list of companies owned by their employees is available from the National Center for Employee Ownership.

Finding American made products as opposed to American corporations requires more legwork. Almost 8 in 10 American consumers say they prefer to buy American made products according to Consumer Reports. (Another survey found that for Americans ages 18-34 the percentage drops to 4 in 10.) Patriotic buying has gained considerable cache in the last few years and is beginning to change corporate behavior.

Consider this story of Florida orange juice. In 2007 Pepsi and then Coke began to mix oranges from other countries with Florida oranges. Florida’s Natural, an agricultural cooperative owned by 1100 growers, whose motto is "we own the land, we own the trees, we own the company" added a logo to its packages sporting an American flag and the words “Product of U.S.A.” For a few years Pepsi and Coke thought price would trump homegrown but in early 2012 the Tropicana Products division of PepsiCo began to proclaim in print ads, “Grown, picked and squeezed in Florida,” (Florida’s Natural responded with its own new tag line: “All Florida. Never imported. Who can say that?”)

A 2013 survey of more than 200 U.S.-based investors interested in the luxury sector, found 80 percent of them concerned that the reputational risk associated with offshore manufacturing is beginning to offset the cost savings for luxury goods manufacturers. After Ralph Lauren proudly unveiled its new uniforms for the U.S. team for the 2012 summer Olympics it was discovered that every piece of the uniform was made overseas. A considerable public backlash led the company to promise to make the U.S. uniforms for the 2014 Winter Games from USA components.

Mitch Cahn, the CEO of Unionwear, a Newark, New Jersey clothing manufacturer told John Oliver about why both Democratic and Republican candidates buy his company’s hats. “Both want to demonstrate their commitment to made in USA. Plus, whenever one of their vendors messes up and sources something from overseas or switches. When they get caught, which they invariably will, it’s going to cost them so much more money to fix the problem, backpedal, apologize, change their message, that it’s easier and cheaper to just patronize clean shops.”

Finding out if a product is made in the United States is easy. All imports must carry country of origin information on the outside of the package. Finding domestic products that are largely made of domestic components, however, may be more challenging.

How American Is That American Product?

Even if we buy American made how much of the value of the product is actually made in America? For automobiles, textiles, wool and fur products the law requires disclosure of the percentage of a product's domestically produced content.

The 1994 American Automobile Labeling Act (AALA) requires all automobiles and trucks to prominently display a sticker showing the percentage of its value made in the United States. The AALA has several shortcomings. For one, it does not distinguish between Canadian and U.S. production. It does not take into account where the profits go (e.g. is the company foreign owned). Finally, it allows the “content percentages to be calculated on a "carline" basis rather than for each individual vehicle and may be rounded to the nearest 5 percent.”

The more sophisticated Kogod Made in America Auto Index, released annually by American University incorporates the (AALA) but adds seven further criteria: site of body, chassis, and electrical parts manufacturing (50 percent); site of engine production (14 percent); site of inventory and capital expense allocation (11 percent); site of transmission production (7 percent); site of assembly labor (6 percent); site of research and development (6 percent); and finally, where the profits in each aspect of the transaction go (6 percent).

In 2014 the Ford F-150 truck, the best selling vehicle in America topped the Kogod charts with 87.5 points out of 100.

As a general rule, automakers are more likely to build larger vehicles with higher profit margins in the U.S. and smaller ones overseas. The Kogod index seems to bear this out. The F-150 and Chevy Silverado score in the 80’s while the Chevy Spark and Ford Fiesta have scores of 15.5 and 19.5 respectively.

Aside from cars and textiles and furs, no U.S. supplier needs to identify where the product is made or its components. But if the company boasts that a product is “Made in the USA” or “Made in America” it must “contain no - or negligible - foreign content" according to regulations issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the product's final assembly or processing must take place in the United States.

Nevertheless, the buyer who sees a Made in America sticker must still beware. The FTC investigates several complaints a year, almost all submitted by manufacturing competitors and the vast majority end in a settlement with no civil penalty. The civil penalties themselves are modest. California has its own higher and more rigidly enforced standard. No component of a product advertised as Made in the USA can be imported. In 2011 California’s Supreme Court ruled that the company Kwikset could be sued for using the label on one of its locks because the screws in it were manufactured in Mexico.

Americans don’t like to be misled by faux patriotic corporate advertising. As Consumer Reports notes, “Readers who have sent us complaints seem most irritated by foreign-made products whose makers have patriotic names (American Mills, Americana Olives, Great American Seafood, United States Sweaters, the U.S. Lock company) or whose packages have flag-waving slogans (“true American quality”) or symbols (pictures of the flag, eagle, Statue of Liberty).”

Over 90 percent of shoes and clothing sold in the United States is imported. One will almost always pay more to purchase Made in the USA but often their quality is far superior. If you buy a Brooks Brothers suit, 70% of which are made in Massachusetts, or tie, 100% of which are made in New York or shirt, 15% of which are made in North Carolina the quality is first rate and the clothes last considerably longer than cheaper imported items.

More than 97 percent of American denim jeans are made abroad but you can still find American made denim. In the 1990s Lawson Nickol was working for a U.S. jeans manufacturer who like almost all other jean manufacturers decided to move production to China. He resigned and in 2002 with his son BJ Nickol founded the All American Clothing Co. They started manufacturing their own clothing in 2007. Unique among jeans manufacturers, their customers can enter a code and trace their jeans back to the farm that grew the cotton.

One of the new firm’s biggest challenges was finding suppliers. "The apparel industry has lost 85 percent of cut and sew people in the USA since 2002 when China became king”, Nickol notes. He’s had to pay more for their materials and labor which makes their clothes more expensive which Lawson concedes but proudly adds, “…I buy a lot of higher cost products that are made in the USA in order to support tax base, jobs, SSN, police, firemen, hospitals, infrastructure, military, freedom, etc, etc. I don’t buy foreign jeans and help to support labor atrocities, child labor, poor manufacturing quality, give money to the foreign governments…”

Despite higher input costs his jeans prices are still competitive with denim giants like Levis. Why? “One of the things we don’t do a lot of is marketing and advertising,” says Nickol. American Clothing sells 95 percent of its products online. Nickol adds, “We don’t have as big of margins.”

Sluggish wages in the United States and soaring labor costs in countries like China, coupled with the growing realization of the costs inherent in the rigidity of long supply chains and the potential for product piracy, has made it increasingly possible to buy American in many sectors. Whirlpool already makes 80 percent of the products it sells in the U.S in its U.S. plants and it prices them competitively. In 2000, it manufactured most of its front-loading washers in Germany. Now the company is moving that production back to its Ohio-based facilities. “On the one hand, U.S. labor costs are often higher than in other countries,” says Whirlpool’s Casey Tubman. “But when you look at the higher productivity for American workers and consider the fact that it’s very expensive to ship something as big as a refrigerator or washer, we can quickly make up those costs.”

There are several useful web sites that identify American made products. (Look here, here, here, here, and here.)

Going Beyond Buy America

The same Consumer Reports 2013 survey that found that 78 percent of us prefer to buy American products also found that other values were equally or more important to us. Ninety-two percent preferred products from companies that give back to the local community; 90 percent preferred companies that treat their workers well; 82 percent prefer firms that express public support for causes we believe; 79 percent prefer a company that engages in environmentally friendly practices.

If you are one of the 90 percent who care how companies you want to buy from treat their workers one good indicator is whether the product is made with union labor. For clothing you can look for the UNITE label (the union created from the merger of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union). Those seeking to buy a specific car made by union members can find a list here. Those seeking web sites that offer extensive links to union made products can go here and here.

Those wanting to know more generally about the character of the company with whom they are doing business can check out whether it is a Benefit Corporation. This new type of corporation is required to consider its impact not only on shareholders but also on workers, community, and the environment. Benefit corporations are required to make available to the public an annual benefit report that assesses their overall social and environmental performance against a third party standard. Twenty-eight states currently permit a corporation to become a Benefit Corporation. A list of Benefit Corporations by state is available here.

For example, in 2014 King Arthur Flour and New Belgium were among the top rated B Corporations on labor issues. The 200 year old King Arthur, a company of 388 workers at the busiest times of the year, has a minimum hourly starting wage for full-time workers of $11.25 an hour. New Belgium's lowest wage for non-temporary workers is $12 an hour. King Arthur Flour and New Belgium are 100 percent employee-owned companies. Both have profit sharing plans. At King Arthur Flour low income employees receive a heavily subsidized Community Supported Agriculture shares.

As Stephen Lurie at Vox observes, despite its high rating, King Arthur Flour puts its USDA organic label on the front of its packages and its B Logo on the back.

Assessing the character of a company is complicated and by its nature incomplete. Some might want to know how willing companies are to pay their fair share of taxes to sustain our public schools and roads and colleges. In 2015 Bloomberg compiled a directory of 299 companies detailing how much of their total profits they’ve stashed abroad to avoid taxes. Bizvizz has an ambitious but spotty downloadable app allows you to use your phone to take a picture of a brand and discover what tax rate the corporation that makes the product pays and in many cases, where its political contributions go.

Often those who want to make ethical purchases will have to assess which of the values they embrace are more important. For example, what do we buy when the organic farm treats its workers poorly? Would you choose a conventional tomato picked by well-treated workers than a local heirloom variety harvested by oppressed workers as the food writer and activist Eric Schlosser declared he would? Or would you choose the tomato that stresses the environment? A Toyota Camry is among those vehicles with the highest percentage of its components coming from the United States. But its plants are not unionized and the company’s profits do not stay in the United States.

With much fanfare Walmart has launched a new Buy America initiative. Would you now shop there given that Walmart’s policies may have single-handedly resulted in the outsourcing of hundreds of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs and the erosion of U.S. workers wages? Or that more than 20 years ago it launched a similar campaign and began hanging “Made in America” signs in its 750 stores until NBC’s Dateline offered significant evidence the initiative was “more an advertising gimmick than a substantial plan.” At the beginning of its current initiative Walmart publicized a contract with 1888 Mills, a Georgia towel maker to produce American-made towels for the company’s stores. But 1888 Mills, which has an overseas workforce of some 14,000, will be adding only 35 jobs low paid jobs at its U.S. factory to meet Walmart’s multi-year purchase agreement.

Sometimes different values can lead customers to the same supplier. As I noted above, both Democrats and Republicans buy their caps from Unionwear in election years to demonstrate their support for domestic jobs. John Oliver calls it “electoral jingoism”. But CEO Mitch Cahn points out one key difference between the political parties on their values beyond domestic sourcing, “Democrats brag about their products being union made and the republican don’t want anyone to find out about it.”

Sometimes an ethical purchasing decision is easy. Sometimes it is hard, challenging us to do the homework necessary to put our money where our values are. Sometimes it requires us to choose which values are primary. You pays your money and you makes your choice.

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http://www.alternet.org/dunkin-donuts-ceo-who-earns-10-million-claims-be-outraged-15-minimum-wageDunkin' Donuts CEO Who Earns $10 Million Claims to Be Outraged by $15 Minimum Wagehttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/103325078/0/alternet_labor~Dunkin-Donuts-CEO-Who-Earns-Million-Claims-to-Be-Outraged-by-Minimum-Wage

Corporate leaders are circling the wagons.

This week, the New York Wage Board recommended that the state's fast food workers should make $15 per hour, which has been the rallying cry for the labor movement across the country.

The New York move was seen as a victory for workers in this industry, who are among the lowest-paid in the country.

Within a day, corporate America was on the attack, to stop the spread of this burgeoning national movement.

Dunkin Donuts CEO Nigel Travis – who previously held senior positions at Papa John's and Burger King, other low-wage employers – appeared on CNN and decried the $15 minimum wage as “absolutely outrageous.” He went on to claim that the move will prevent his company from hiring more people and would “affect small business and franchises.”

Watch his appearance:

It's curious that Travis would argue that paying low-income people money – and in this case, $15 per hour isn't a whole lot of money in an expensive state like New York, it amounts to around $30,000 per year, which is fairly modest – would have cataclysmic impacts on his company and others.

After all, Travis's own compensation is through the roof. His most recent annual salary was $990,385. If you add in stock options and other non-salary benefits, his total compensation is calculated at over $10.2 million.

Yes, it's true that a single executive's salary isn't going to make a huge economic impact on a company as large as Dunkin Donuts – its adjusted net income in 2014 was $186 million – it does seem odd that Travis and so many of his executive colleagues across Corporate America are eager to argue that small increases to modest wages for their employees are out of the question while doing little to reduce the growth of their own compensation, which in this case is that of over 300 employees who would be earning $15 per hour.

This week, the New York Wage Board recommended that the state's fast food workers should make $15 per hour, which has been the rallying cry for the labor movement across the country.

The New York move was seen as a victory for workers in this industry, who are among the lowest-paid in the country.

Within a day, corporate America was on the attack, to stop the spread of this burgeoning national movement.

Dunkin Donuts CEO Nigel Travis – who previously held senior positions at Papa John's and Burger King, other low-wage employers – appeared on CNN and decried the $15 minimum wage as “absolutely outrageous.” He went on to claim that the move will prevent his company from hiring more people and would “affect small business and franchises.”

Watch his appearance:

It's curious that Travis would argue that paying low-income people money – and in this case, $15 per hour isn't a whole lot of money in an expensive state like New York, it amounts to around $30,000 per year, which is fairly modest – would have cataclysmic impacts on his company and others.

After all, Travis's own compensation is through the roof. His most recent annual salary was $990,385. If you add in stock options and other non-salary benefits, his total compensation is calculated at over $10.2 million.

Yes, it's true that a single executive's salary isn't going to make a huge economic impact on a company as large as Dunkin Donuts – its adjusted net income in 2014 was $186 million – it does seem odd that Travis and so many of his executive colleagues across Corporate America are eager to argue that small increases to modest wages for their employees are out of the question while doing little to reduce the growth of their own compensation, which in this case is that of over 300 employees who would be earning $15 per hour.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/why-scott-walker-american-dictator-waitingWhy Scott Walker Is An American Dictator In Waitinghttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/103241628/0/alternet_labor~Why-Scott-Walker-Is-An-American-Dictator-In-Waiting

Before Scott Walker officially announced his candidacy for president this month, he said he’d kill President Obama’s nuclear pact with Iran. A week after announcing, Walker said he had no compunction about killing Iranians, saying he was ready to go to war with Iran on “day one” of his presidency.

Walker’s war-mongering isn’t theoretical. In his home state of Wisconsin, his latest political assassination target is the blandly named Government Accountability Board, a bipartisan panel of judges whose mission is keeping state elections fair and corruption-free. The GAB sided with different Wisconsin prosecutors (Republicans and Democrats) who launched a probe into illegal campaigning by Walker and his right-wing allies. By the time lawsuits landed at the state’s Supreme Court, Walker’s benefactors had bankrolled successful high-court campaigns and had a sitting majority.

Thus, days before Walker officially announced his 2016 candidacy, the Court not only ruled 4-2 that the corruption probe was out-of-bounds, it also rewrote the state’s campaign finance laws to allow the very collusion that was seen as illegal under the prior law. Lincoln Caplan, a legal writer for The New Yorker, summed that ruling up as substituting “the misrule of politics for the rule of law.”

But Walker wasn’t satisfied with a hometown version of a Citizens United ruling, empowering the richest right-wing Wisconsin interest groups. Instead, he called for GAB’s head, urging the Republican-majority legislature to disband what is arguably the nation’s most reputable state election oversight board, and replace it with panel of political allies, mirroring his Supreme Court majority.

“Someday, a novelist with Wisconsin roots will tell the story of Walker’s engagement in squalid politics—and whether it carried him to the White House,” Caplan wrote. “Now, however, it is possible to document the close ties between the national network of major conservative donors backing Walker and the conservative lobbying groups that turned the Wisconsin court into a political tool.”

Whether waging war on his political enemies at home or fantasizing about attacking enemies abroad, Walker arguably is the most toxic authoritarian candidate in the Republican field. It’s insufficient to merely say that Walker likes to punish his enemies, or that he relishes sneak attacks, or that his career has been marked by the politics of fear, blame and divisiveness, and an inability to show restraint. All of these are true.

“I find [him] more Nixonian than even Richard Nixon himself (the authoritarian leader with whom I was, and am, so very familiar,” wrote ex-Nixon White House Counsel John Dean in April 2012, on the eve of a special gubernatorial recall election Walker won. “To me, it is clear that Wisconsin has a double high authoritarian governor, a conservative without conscience.”

Today, three years later, Walker is parading around the campaign trail like an American dictator in waiting. He has a lengthy record on so many issues that reveal the same pattern: pick fights, launch sneak attacks, smear and scapegoat opponents, and then punish the defeated, according to Wisconsin media analysts. But he also has the personality of an aspiring American tyrant, as Dean noted. Walker may not be Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy’s ghost, but he certainly is heir to that anti-communist crusader’s hateful lineage.

“Democracy and democratic institutions do not function well with dogmatic, unbending authoritarian leaders,” Dean wrote. “Authoritarians are great as dictators, and even at times benevolent. They are often outstanding at running businesses, and when serving as high-ranking officers in the military, not to mention law enforcement. But they are failures as presidents and governors, and… dangerous to democracy.”

The Pattern: Incite, Sow Fear, Attack, Punish

There is a method to his madness—or his angry politics. Walker is best known outside of Wisconsin for his anti-union crusades as governor. Once elected, he did the bidding of his libertarian sponsors, including the Koch brothers, by passing Act 10 in a state budget crisis. That law did not merely raise revenues but stripped most state employee unions of collective bargaining rights (pro-GOP police and firefighters were exempt) and cut state contributions to health plans and pensions. The anti-union attack prompted the 2012 recall, which he won against a lackluster Democrat. Back in office, Walker waited for revenge.

After his 2014 re-election, he and the GOP-led legislature surprised the public by passing a “right-to-work” law, further undermining unions. They didn’t stop there. Their latest attack, in the just-passed state budget, is gutting academic tenure in the state university system, a long-held goal of right-wingers who believe academia is far too liberal.

Brendan Fischer, a journalist and attorney with the Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, said there was a pattern to Walker’s actions. He reeled off examples of Walker picking unprovoked political fights, not backing down and punishing his enemies. There was Act 10, defeating unions. There was tort reform, another longtime libertarian goal, thwarting trial lawyers. There was a new tougher voter ID rule, disenfranchising Democrats and partisan redistricting, consolidating GOP control. There was gutting tenure, hitting academic labor rights. There was the recent effort to narrow the state’s open records law, pushing back against press and public access to his administration’s deliberations. “This is about going after political enemies and not backing down, even when the public is against you,” Fischer said.

Many of these political assaults were sneak attacks, he added. Walker never mentioned going after collective bargaining when running for office in 2010. He never raised the possibility of passing right-to-work laws, instead pledging to form a new partnership with labor. Before his re-election in 2014, Walker, a strident pro-lifer, said a woman’s right to choose was between her and a doctor, but last week he signed into law a draconian 20-week abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest.

In many of these fights, Walker demonized his opponents, Fischer said, pointing to a pattern he’s used throughout his political career. Walker fans grievances to sow fear and to scapegoat enemies. He started as a state legislator by pushing draconian crime bills—tougher sentences, no chance for parole or probation, expanding prisons—all drafted by national right-wing groups whose donors and members either become more powerful or wealthy when the prison system grows. He sold it by stirring fears about crime from nonwhites and the poor, Fischer said, adding that Walker only slightly changed that narrative to attack unions and labor. “They’re lazy or taking your money,” Fischer said, summarizing the line of attack. “He’s applied the same scapegoat tactics that he applied to people of color and welfare recipients to unions.”

The Personality of a Dictator

In 2006, John Dean, who served as White House Counsel to President Nixon from July 1970 to April 1973, wrote a book that became a New York Times bestseller, Conservatives Without Conscience. “I relied on a half-century of empirical studies by social scientists to better understand political figures who evidence little concern for anyone and anything other than themselves, their tribe, and their goal of imposing their worldview on others,” he wrote. “That science on authoritarianism remains valid and unchallenged.”

In 2012, Dean wrote a two-part series for Justia.com describing where Walker fit into this malevolent spectrum. In the first part, he discussed the personality, or psychological traits, of classic authoritarians. In part two, he delivered his verdict on Walker, citing even more examples than those given by Fischer, such as Walker’s ongoing assaults on same-sex couples and LGBT equality. But more intriguing than Dean’s conclusion is the underlying basis for his verdict. Dean relied on Robert Altemeyer, a retired University of Manitoba psychology professor and noted author who spent decades studying authoritarian personalities and citing North American politicians as examples.

Dean’s summary of what authoritarians do perfectly mirrors Walker’s track record cited by Fischer and others. He wrote, “Social dominators (authoritarian leaders) have the following recurring traits: They’re typically men; they are dominating; they oppose equality; they are desirous of personal power; they are amoral, intimidating and bullying, faintly hedonistic, vengeful, pitiless, exploitive, manipulative, and dishonest; they will cheat to win; they are highly prejudiced (racist, sexist, and/or homophobic), mean-spirited, militant, and nationalistic; they tell others what they want to hear, take advantage of ‘suckers,’ and specialize in creating false images to sell themselves. They may or may not be religious, but usually they are both political and economic conservatives and/or Republicans.”

Dean noted that the followers of these leaders also exhibit certain traits. “They are submissive to authority but aggressive on that authority’s behalf. They are conventional and highly religious, with moderate to little education. They trust untrustworthy authorities, exhibit prejudice (particularly against homosexuals, women and followers of religions other than their own), and are mean-spirited, narrow-minded, intolerant, bullying, zealous, dogmatic, and uncritical toward chosen authority. Moreover, they are hypocritical, inconsistent and contradictory, prone to panic easily, highly self-righteous, and moralistic. They are strict disciplinarians, and are severely punitive; they demand loyalty and return it; they exhibit little self-awareness, and they, too, are usually political and economic conservatives and/or Republicans.”

In some cases, the same politician exhibits the traits both of authoritarian leaders and their followers, Dean explained. “Social scientists labeled these people ‘Double Highs,’” he said, adding that Altemeyer said this was not a contradiction. “He found that these Double Highs relate to the questions regarding submission not by considering how they see themselves submit to others, but rather how others submit to them. They simply see the world as a place where they are always in charge.”

“Double Highs are endowed with a host of negative personality traits, and, it seems such traits, in Double Highs, are always present in excess,” Dean said. “Double Highs are not merely prejudiced, they are doubly so. Their orders are to be followed, but not by them. They are not merely dogmatic, but defiantly insistent upon their dogmas. They are not only manipulative of others, but talented at their manipulation.”

Not surprisingly, Dean concluded that Scott Walker “possesses… all of these defining traits.”

He cited Walker’s biography to show “the behavior, writ large, of a dominator.” By age seven, Walker “formed a ‘Jesus USA’ club, which was a mix of his father’s Baptist ministry and his attraction to patriotism.” A year later, he raised money for an American flag for his village. As a scout, he “sought leadership posts, which provide some control.” At Marquette University, though he didn’t graduate, he was elected to the student senate, and lost twice running for student body president. He ran for the State Assembly the year he lost the president race, and lost there too. “Since then, Walker has never stopped running.” In 1993, he was elected to the Assembly. In 2002, he became Milwaukee County Executive, and in 2010, governor.

Dean cites Walker’s opposition to equality, noting “the Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (which is searchable) further defines social dominators as ‘hard, tough, ruthless, and unfeeling toward others, as opposed to compassionate, generous, caring, and altruistic.’” Dean cites Walker’s intolerance toward gays and lesbians. “As Governor, he has worked to end Wisconsin’s recognition of the rights of same-sex couples. He fired the law firm defending the state’s domestic-partnership law. And he appointed a woman to the state’s Labor and Industry Review Commission who believes that gays can be harassed in the workplace.”

Always escalating in the service of his ideology, Walker the presidential candidate recently called for a constitutional amendment to allow states to decide the question of same-sex marriage after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of nationwide marriage equality.

The next authoritarian trait Dean cites is Walker’s lifelong hunger for power—and increasing the power of the offices he’s held. “Scott Walker has been seeking personal power his entire life, and has never stopped reaching for it,” Dean wrote. “Often overlooked in Walker’s infamous union-busting ‘budget-repair bill’ [Act 10] is the power grab to fill three dozen civil-service jobs with political appointees. For instance, the bill politicized and placed under Walker’s control functions like open-records requests, the selection of general counsels for key agencies, and the selection of communications spokespeople in key departments. He has increased his personal power over some fifteen state agencies, and I suspect that he is (or was, depending on the recall vote) just getting started.”

Fischer makes the same point, saying that Walker’s “gratification is not perks [of office] but advancing his career. He does what it takes to get elected. Once in office he pays back donors and their interests.”

Dean also noted that authoritarian leaders are amoral. “A politician like Scott Walker will wrap himself in a cloak of morality, while, in fact, acting anything but morally,” he said. “Needless to say, Walker’s policies that attack poor women by cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood; his slashing of education budgets while giving tax breaks to wealthy corporations; and his pursuit of similar radical Republican actions all raise serious moral issues.” Moreover, Walker has a long record of lying to the public; it was not just a pledge to respect a woman’s right to choose, or not to pursue right-to-work laws before a tight election.

“His lying is notorious,” Dean wrote. “Politifacts Wisconsin (which I am told is more reliable than most of these sites) finds Walker to be an accomplished falsifier. With respect to 44 statements that Politifacts examined, Walker was found to have been truthful only on six occasions. The fact that 38 statements were pants-on-fire false, false, mostly false, or half-truths is stark evidence of amorality. I watched a video of a Walker speech at the Goldwater Institute. He’s slick: Fast-talking, confident, and dishonest—I watched him distort facts with which I was familiar. He spoke in mostly half-truths, and certainly not with the kind of candor that the late Senator Goldwater expected from political figures.”

You might think Dean’s indictment of Walker as an American authoritarian—written three years before Walker announced he was running for president—would end here. But it doesn't. Dean also noted how Walker exhibits the traits of authoritarian followers, “because such people see themselves as running the world, and believe that others should always follow leaders, like themselves.”

Walker’s biography is filled with fealty to authority, whether to his father, scout leaders or church elders; and as an adult, to the Republican Party’s leaders and top donors. “While Scott Walker plays by the rules of the authorities he accepts, because he is a dominator, it is not surprising that his resume shows he has constantly sought to become an authority himself.”

Dean writes that Walker’s belligerent tactics, always escalating against enemies and punishing them when victorious, comes from a mix of fears and self-righteousness. “Another classic example of authoritarian aggressiveness is the public official who is always calling for greater punishment for perceived and real criminals,” he wrote. “And indeed, the most striking and telling example of Walker’s aggressiveness on behalf of radical right-wing Republican philosophy are his views on crime and punishment.”

Walker’s crime policies are unrepentant. He pushed to build a Supermax prison when experts said it wasn’t needed. He shepherded “truth in sentencing” legislation that ended parole and increased mandatory sentences by 50 percent. He supported failed legislation that would have sent juvenile offenders to adult prisons after age 15. These examples — apart from being outside of today’s growing Republican consensus that tough-on-crime prison reforms don’t work, are too costly and should be repealed — are nonetheless “examples of classic authoritarian behavior at work,” Dean said.

Finally, Dean said that Walker, like many authoritarians, has a simplistic set of personal beliefs that takes refuge in black-and-white thinking, fundamentalist religion and sees itself as upholding traditional norms. “Scott Walker is Mr. Conventional,” he said. “He has long been an active member of a fundamentalist church. He wears conservative, off-the-rack clothing. His hair is always closely trimmed, and his manner polite and pleasant. And he keeps company with like-acting and like-thinking people. (I cannot find a single radical right-wing position that Walker rejects.)”

Commander in Chief or American Dictator?

Dean’s observations cast Walker’s behavior and gaffes from the early 2016 campaign trail in a new light. Indeed, in last winter’s Iowa Freedom Summit, where he emerged as the early right-wing frontrunner, his best applause lines were bragging about beating up on state employee unions and how his wife taught him to buy shirts at discount outlets.

It is easy to say that Walker’s early foreign policy remarks show he is both naïve and dangerous. Last winter, he absurdly compared taking on ISIS, the Islamic State, to beating pro-union protesters during the recall election. More recently, he has said several times that as commander in chief, he would be ready to go to war with Iran on “day one” of his presidency.

The Center for Media and Democracy’s Fischer says Walker “talks about foreign policy as a public safety issue; it’s similar to the strategy he used as a young legislator when talking about crime, but now he’s applying it to Iran—be scared, they can’t be trusted, and so on.”

John Dean wrote that as Wisconsin governor, “Walker’s push to get... [union-busting] Act 10 passed was done in about as authoritarian a fashion as you will ever see outside of a dictatorship.” But as Fischer observed, Walker is deploying his authoritarian personality and mindset to global problems where the stakes are much higher. He may be running for commander in chief, but he has all the makings of an American dictator.

One can only hope that by next summer, when Republicans choose their presidential nominee, voters and even the GOP establishment will conclude it is too risky to give the keys to the White House to the toxic authoritarian governor from Wisconsin.

Before Scott Walker officially announced his candidacy for president this month, he said he’d kill President Obama’s nuclear pact with Iran. A week after announcing, Walker said he had no compunction about killing Iranians, saying he was ready to go to war with Iran on “day one” of his presidency.

Walker’s war-mongering isn’t theoretical. In his home state of Wisconsin, his latest political assassination target is the blandly named Government Accountability Board, a bipartisan panel of judges whose mission is keeping state elections fair and corruption-free. The GAB sided with different Wisconsin prosecutors (Republicans and Democrats) who launched a probe into illegal campaigning by Walker and his right-wing allies. By the time lawsuits landed at the state’s Supreme Court, Walker’s benefactors had bankrolled successful high-court campaigns and had a sitting majority.

Thus, days before Walker officially announced his 2016 candidacy, the Court not only ruled 4-2 that the corruption probe was out-of-bounds, it also rewrote the state’s campaign finance laws to allow the very collusion that was seen as illegal under the prior law. Lincoln Caplan, a legal writer for The New Yorker, summed that ruling up as substituting “the misrule of politics for the rule of law.”

But Walker wasn’t satisfied with a hometown version of a Citizens United ruling, empowering the richest right-wing Wisconsin interest groups. Instead, he called for GAB’s head, urging the Republican-majority legislature to disband what is arguably the nation’s most reputable state election oversight board, and replace it with panel of political allies, mirroring his Supreme Court majority.

“Someday, a novelist with Wisconsin roots will tell the story of Walker’s engagement in squalid politics—and whether it carried him to the White House,” Caplan wrote. “Now, however, it is possible to document the close ties between the national network of major conservative donors backing Walker and the conservative lobbying groups that turned the Wisconsin court into a political tool.”

Whether waging war on his political enemies at home or fantasizing about attacking enemies abroad, Walker arguably is the most toxic authoritarian candidate in the Republican field. It’s insufficient to merely say that Walker likes to punish his enemies, or that he relishes sneak attacks, or that his career has been marked by the politics of fear, blame and divisiveness, and an inability to show restraint. All of these are true.

“I find [him] more Nixonian than even Richard Nixon himself (the authoritarian leader with whom I was, and am, so very familiar,” wrote ex-Nixon White House Counsel John Dean in April 2012, on the eve of a special gubernatorial recall election Walker won. “To me, it is clear that Wisconsin has a double high authoritarian governor, a conservative without conscience.”

Today, three years later, Walker is parading around the campaign trail like an American dictator in waiting. He has a lengthy record on so many issues that reveal the same pattern: pick fights, launch sneak attacks, smear and scapegoat opponents, and then punish the defeated, according to Wisconsin media analysts. But he also has the personality of an aspiring American tyrant, as Dean noted. Walker may not be Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy’s ghost, but he certainly is heir to that anti-communist crusader’s hateful lineage.

“Democracy and democratic institutions do not function well with dogmatic, unbending authoritarian leaders,” Dean wrote. “Authoritarians are great as dictators, and even at times benevolent. They are often outstanding at running businesses, and when serving as high-ranking officers in the military, not to mention law enforcement. But they are failures as presidents and governors, and… dangerous to democracy.”

The Pattern: Incite, Sow Fear, Attack, Punish

There is a method to his madness—or his angry politics. Walker is best known outside of Wisconsin for his anti-union crusades as governor. Once elected, he did the bidding of his libertarian sponsors, including the Koch brothers, by passing Act 10 in a state budget crisis. That law did not merely raise revenues but stripped most state employee unions of collective bargaining rights (pro-GOP police and firefighters were exempt) and cut state contributions to health plans and pensions. The anti-union attack prompted the 2012 recall, which he won against a lackluster Democrat. Back in office, Walker waited for revenge.

After his 2014 re-election, he and the GOP-led legislature surprised the public by passing a “right-to-work” law, further undermining unions. They didn’t stop there. Their latest attack, in the just-passed state budget, is gutting academic tenure in the state university system, a long-held goal of right-wingers who believe academia is far too liberal.

Brendan Fischer, a journalist and attorney with the Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, said there was a pattern to Walker’s actions. He reeled off examples of Walker picking unprovoked political fights, not backing down and punishing his enemies. There was Act 10, defeating unions. There was tort reform, another longtime libertarian goal, thwarting trial lawyers. There was a new tougher voter ID rule, disenfranchising Democrats and partisan redistricting, consolidating GOP control. There was gutting tenure, hitting academic labor rights. There was the recent effort to narrow the state’s open records law, pushing back against press and public access to his administration’s deliberations. “This is about going after political enemies and not backing down, even when the public is against you,” Fischer said.

Many of these political assaults were sneak attacks, he added. Walker never mentioned going after collective bargaining when running for office in 2010. He never raised the possibility of passing right-to-work laws, instead pledging to form a new partnership with labor. Before his re-election in 2014, Walker, a strident pro-lifer, said a woman’s right to choose was between her and a doctor, but last week he signed into law a draconian 20-week abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest.

In many of these fights, Walker demonized his opponents, Fischer said, pointing to a pattern he’s used throughout his political career. Walker fans grievances to sow fear and to scapegoat enemies. He started as a state legislator by pushing draconian crime bills—tougher sentences, no chance for parole or probation, expanding prisons—all drafted by national right-wing groups whose donors and members either become more powerful or wealthy when the prison system grows. He sold it by stirring fears about crime from nonwhites and the poor, Fischer said, adding that Walker only slightly changed that narrative to attack unions and labor. “They’re lazy or taking your money,” Fischer said, summarizing the line of attack. “He’s applied the same scapegoat tactics that he applied to people of color and welfare recipients to unions.”

The Personality of a Dictator

In 2006, John Dean, who served as White House Counsel to President Nixon from July 1970 to April 1973, wrote a book that became a New York Times bestseller, Conservatives Without Conscience. “I relied on a half-century of empirical studies by social scientists to better understand political figures who evidence little concern for anyone and anything other than themselves, their tribe, and their goal of imposing their worldview on others,” he wrote. “That science on authoritarianism remains valid and unchallenged.”

In 2012, Dean wrote a two-part series for Justia.com describing where Walker fit into this malevolent spectrum. In the first part, he discussed the personality, or psychological traits, of classic authoritarians. In part two, he delivered his verdict on Walker, citing even more examples than those given by Fischer, such as Walker’s ongoing assaults on same-sex couples and LGBT equality. But more intriguing than Dean’s conclusion is the underlying basis for his verdict. Dean relied on Robert Altemeyer, a retired University of Manitoba psychology professor and noted author who spent decades studying authoritarian personalities and citing North American politicians as examples.

Dean’s summary of what authoritarians do perfectly mirrors Walker’s track record cited by Fischer and others. He wrote, “Social dominators (authoritarian leaders) have the following recurring traits: They’re typically men; they are dominating; they oppose equality; they are desirous of personal power; they are amoral, intimidating and bullying, faintly hedonistic, vengeful, pitiless, exploitive, manipulative, and dishonest; they will cheat to win; they are highly prejudiced (racist, sexist, and/or homophobic), mean-spirited, militant, and nationalistic; they tell others what they want to hear, take advantage of ‘suckers,’ and specialize in creating false images to sell themselves. They may or may not be religious, but usually they are both political and economic conservatives and/or Republicans.”

Dean noted that the followers of these leaders also exhibit certain traits. “They are submissive to authority but aggressive on that authority’s behalf. They are conventional and highly religious, with moderate to little education. They trust untrustworthy authorities, exhibit prejudice (particularly against homosexuals, women and followers of religions other than their own), and are mean-spirited, narrow-minded, intolerant, bullying, zealous, dogmatic, and uncritical toward chosen authority. Moreover, they are hypocritical, inconsistent and contradictory, prone to panic easily, highly self-righteous, and moralistic. They are strict disciplinarians, and are severely punitive; they demand loyalty and return it; they exhibit little self-awareness, and they, too, are usually political and economic conservatives and/or Republicans.”

In some cases, the same politician exhibits the traits both of authoritarian leaders and their followers, Dean explained. “Social scientists labeled these people ‘Double Highs,’” he said, adding that Altemeyer said this was not a contradiction. “He found that these Double Highs relate to the questions regarding submission not by considering how they see themselves submit to others, but rather how others submit to them. They simply see the world as a place where they are always in charge.”

“Double Highs are endowed with a host of negative personality traits, and, it seems such traits, in Double Highs, are always present in excess,” Dean said. “Double Highs are not merely prejudiced, they are doubly so. Their orders are to be followed, but not by them. They are not merely dogmatic, but defiantly insistent upon their dogmas. They are not only manipulative of others, but talented at their manipulation.”

Not surprisingly, Dean concluded that Scott Walker “possesses… all of these defining traits.”

He cited Walker’s biography to show “the behavior, writ large, of a dominator.” By age seven, Walker “formed a ‘Jesus USA’ club, which was a mix of his father’s Baptist ministry and his attraction to patriotism.” A year later, he raised money for an American flag for his village. As a scout, he “sought leadership posts, which provide some control.” At Marquette University, though he didn’t graduate, he was elected to the student senate, and lost twice running for student body president. He ran for the State Assembly the year he lost the president race, and lost there too. “Since then, Walker has never stopped running.” In 1993, he was elected to the Assembly. In 2002, he became Milwaukee County Executive, and in 2010, governor.

Dean cites Walker’s opposition to equality, noting “the Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (which is searchable) further defines social dominators as ‘hard, tough, ruthless, and unfeeling toward others, as opposed to compassionate, generous, caring, and altruistic.’” Dean cites Walker’s intolerance toward gays and lesbians. “As Governor, he has worked to end Wisconsin’s recognition of the rights of same-sex couples. He fired the law firm defending the state’s domestic-partnership law. And he appointed a woman to the state’s Labor and Industry Review Commission who believes that gays can be harassed in the workplace.”

Always escalating in the service of his ideology, Walker the presidential candidate recently called for a constitutional amendment to allow states to decide the question of same-sex marriage after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of nationwide marriage equality.

The next authoritarian trait Dean cites is Walker’s lifelong hunger for power—and increasing the power of the offices he’s held. “Scott Walker has been seeking personal power his entire life, and has never stopped reaching for it,” Dean wrote. “Often overlooked in Walker’s infamous union-busting ‘budget-repair bill’ [Act 10] is the power grab to fill three dozen civil-service jobs with political appointees. For instance, the bill politicized and placed under Walker’s control functions like open-records requests, the selection of general counsels for key agencies, and the selection of communications spokespeople in key departments. He has increased his personal power over some fifteen state agencies, and I suspect that he is (or was, depending on the recall vote) just getting started.”

Fischer makes the same point, saying that Walker’s “gratification is not perks [of office] but advancing his career. He does what it takes to get elected. Once in office he pays back donors and their interests.”

Dean also noted that authoritarian leaders are amoral. “A politician like Scott Walker will wrap himself in a cloak of morality, while, in fact, acting anything but morally,” he said. “Needless to say, Walker’s policies that attack poor women by cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood; his slashing of education budgets while giving tax breaks to wealthy corporations; and his pursuit of similar radical Republican actions all raise serious moral issues.” Moreover, Walker has a long record of lying to the public; it was not just a pledge to respect a woman’s right to choose, or not to pursue right-to-work laws before a tight election.

“His lying is notorious,” Dean wrote. “Politifacts Wisconsin (which I am told is more reliable than most of these sites) finds Walker to be an accomplished falsifier. With respect to 44 statements that Politifacts examined, Walker was found to have been truthful only on six occasions. The fact that 38 statements were pants-on-fire false, false, mostly false, or half-truths is stark evidence of amorality. I watched a video of a Walker speech at the Goldwater Institute. He’s slick: Fast-talking, confident, and dishonest—I watched him distort facts with which I was familiar. He spoke in mostly half-truths, and certainly not with the kind of candor that the late Senator Goldwater expected from political figures.”

You might think Dean’s indictment of Walker as an American authoritarian—written three years before Walker announced he was running for president—would end here. But it doesn't. Dean also noted how Walker exhibits the traits of authoritarian followers, “because such people see themselves as running the world, and believe that others should always follow leaders, like themselves.”

Walker’s biography is filled with fealty to authority, whether to his father, scout leaders or church elders; and as an adult, to the Republican Party’s leaders and top donors. “While Scott Walker plays by the rules of the authorities he accepts, because he is a dominator, it is not surprising that his resume shows he has constantly sought to become an authority himself.”

Dean writes that Walker’s belligerent tactics, always escalating against enemies and punishing them when victorious, comes from a mix of fears and self-righteousness. “Another classic example of authoritarian aggressiveness is the public official who is always calling for greater punishment for perceived and real criminals,” he wrote. “And indeed, the most striking and telling example of Walker’s aggressiveness on behalf of radical right-wing Republican philosophy are his views on crime and punishment.”

Walker’s crime policies are unrepentant. He pushed to build a Supermax prison when experts said it wasn’t needed. He shepherded “truth in sentencing” legislation that ended parole and increased mandatory sentences by 50 percent. He supported failed legislation that would have sent juvenile offenders to adult prisons after age 15. These examples — apart from being outside of today’s growing Republican consensus that tough-on-crime prison reforms don’t work, are too costly and should be repealed — are nonetheless “examples of classic authoritarian behavior at work,” Dean said.

Finally, Dean said that Walker, like many authoritarians, has a simplistic set of personal beliefs that takes refuge in black-and-white thinking, fundamentalist religion and sees itself as upholding traditional norms. “Scott Walker is Mr. Conventional,” he said. “He has long been an active member of a fundamentalist church. He wears conservative, off-the-rack clothing. His hair is always closely trimmed, and his manner polite and pleasant. And he keeps company with like-acting and like-thinking people. (I cannot find a single radical right-wing position that Walker rejects.)”

Commander in Chief or American Dictator?

Dean’s observations cast Walker’s behavior and gaffes from the early 2016 campaign trail in a new light. Indeed, in last winter’s Iowa Freedom Summit, where he emerged as the early right-wing frontrunner, his best applause lines were bragging about beating up on state employee unions and how his wife taught him to buy shirts at discount outlets.

It is easy to say that Walker’s early foreign policy remarks show he is both naïve and dangerous. Last winter, he absurdly compared taking on ISIS, the Islamic State, to beating pro-union protesters during the recall election. More recently, he has said several times that as commander in chief, he would be ready to go to war with Iran on “day one” of his presidency.

The Center for Media and Democracy’s Fischer says Walker “talks about foreign policy as a public safety issue; it’s similar to the strategy he used as a young legislator when talking about crime, but now he’s applying it to Iran—be scared, they can’t be trusted, and so on.”

John Dean wrote that as Wisconsin governor, “Walker’s push to get... [union-busting] Act 10 passed was done in about as authoritarian a fashion as you will ever see outside of a dictatorship.” But as Fischer observed, Walker is deploying his authoritarian personality and mindset to global problems where the stakes are much higher. He may be running for commander in chief, but he has all the makings of an American dictator.

One can only hope that by next summer, when Republicans choose their presidential nominee, voters and even the GOP establishment will conclude it is too risky to give the keys to the White House to the toxic authoritarian governor from Wisconsin.

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http://www.alternet.org/education/right-wing-alec-now-says-school-vouchers-are-kids-suburbia-not-poorRight-Wing ALEC Now Says School Vouchers Are for Kids in Suburbia, Not the Poorhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/103048858/0/alternet_labor~RightWing-ALEC-Now-Says-School-Vouchers-Are-for-Kids-in-Suburbia-Not-the-Poor

Privatizers go where the money is: the middle class.

School vouchers were never about helping poor, at-risk or minority students. But selling them as social mobility tickets was a useful fiction that for some twenty-five years helped rightwing ideologues and corporate backers gain bipartisan support for an ideological scheme designed to privatize public schools.

But the times they are a-changin'. Wisconsin is well on its way toward limitless voucher schools, and last month, Nevada signed into law a universal "education savings account" allowing parents to send their kids to private or religious schools, or even to home-school them—all on the taxpayers' dime. On the federal level, a proposed amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that would have created a multi-billion-dollar-a-year voucher program was only narrowly defeated in the U.S. Senate.

The American Federation for Children (AFC), chaired by Amway billionaire Betsy DeVos, estimates that vouchers and voucher-like tax-credit schemes currently divert $1.5 billion of public money to private schools annually. But that is not enough. By expanding "pro-school choice legislative majorities" in state houses across the country the organization hopes that $5 billion a year will be siphoned out of public schools by 2020 and applied to for-profit and religious schools.

With vouchers gaining momentum nationwide, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is meeting in San Diego this week, has decided to drop the pretense that vouchers have anything to do with social and racial equity, and is now pushing vouchers for the middle class—a project which, if pursued enough in numbers, will progressively erode the public school system and increase the segregation of students based on race and economic standing.

ALEC Comes Clean, Vouchers Are for the Middle Class

The agenda for this week's ALEC meeting includes a presentation entitled: “Problems in Suburbia: Why Middle-Class Students Need School Choice, Digital Learning and Better Options.”

Perhaps more importantly, ALEC's revisions to three of its "model" voucher bills make clear that it is changing focus from underserved inner-city schools to middle-class suburbia. The talking points at the end of the bills state:

"Legislators … should keep in mind the financial burden many middle-class families face in paying for private schools."

“The authors believe that all children from low- and middle-income families should receive public support for their education regardless of whether they are attending a public or private school."

“The authors do not adjust the amount granted to an ESA [Education Savings Account] student based upon the student's income because states do not adjust the public investment for a student attending a traditional public school or a charter based upon their household income.”

As if to further nail down the point that school vouchers are not about equity, ALEC also advises legislators against including language “banning discrimination in hiring.” But if they choose to do so, they should “take care not to interfere with the ability of religious institutions to hire individuals who share their religious beliefs.”

"Abolishing the Public School System"

ALEC is not the only organization coming clean on vouchers.

At the American Federation for Children’s National Policy Summit held in New Orleans, lobbyist Scott Jensen—who, before being banned from Wisconsin politics for violating the public trust served as chief of staff to governor Tommy Thompson, and was a prime mover behind the first voucher program in the nation—admitted that vouchers were really all about “pursuing Milton Friedman’s free-market vision” even though the ideological agenda was nowadays sugarcoated with “a much more compelling message ... of social justice.”

So what exactly was the brave new world Milton Friedman envisioned when he first floated the idea of school vouchers? While lecturing rightwing state lawmakers at a 2006 ALEC meeting, Friedman jumped at the opportunity to explain what his vision was all about. It had nothing whatsoever to do with helping “indigent” children; no, he explained to thunderous applause, vouchers were all about “abolishing the public school system.”

Here is an excerpt from Friedman’s ALEC speech:

If I were to ask everyone here, what would be your idea of the right way to conduct, to have an educational system constructed, you would say the ideal would be to have parents control and pay for their school's education, just as they pay for their food, their clothing and their housing. That, of course, would leave some indigent and problems of charity. Those should be handled as charity problems, not educational problems. The reason we cannot do that is because taxes are used to pay not for education, but for schools, for teachers.

How do we get from where we are to where we want to be—to a system in which parents control the education of their children? Of course, the ideal way would be to abolish the public school system and eliminate all the taxes that pay for it. Then parents would have enough money to pay for private schools, but you're not gonna to do that. So you have to ask, what are politically feasible ways of solving the problem. The answer, in my opinion, is choice, that you have to change the way government money is directed. Instead of it being used to finance schools and buildings, you should decide how much money you are willing to spend on each child and give that money, provide that money in the form of a voucher to the parents of the children so the parents can choose a school that they regard as best for their child.

Ditching the Marketing Plan

By shifting the focus from poor, minority children to the predominantly white middle class, ALEC has come full circle. Vouchers were first proposed in the 1950s as a way for white families to get around the desegregation resulting from the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision. ALEC first pitched vouchers to legislators in 1984 as a way to “introduce normal market forces" into education and to "dismantle the control and power of" teachers' unions. While there was a narrative of parent "empowerment" at that time, there was not even a passing mention of children—let alone minority children.

But when William Bennett joined Ronald Reagan's cabinet in 1985, vouchers soon gained a unique selling point. In the words of The Black Commentator:

“Former Reagan Education Secretary William Bennett understood what was missing from the voucher political chemistry: minorities. If visible elements of the Black and Latino community could be ensnared in what was then a lily-white scheme, then the Right’s dream of a universal vouchers system to subsidize general privatization of education, might become a practical political project. More urgently, Bennett and other rightwing strategists saw that vouchers had the potential to drive a wedge between Blacks and teachers unions, cracking the Democratic Party coalition. In 1988, Bennett urged the Catholic Church to “seek out the poor, the disadvantaged…and take them in, educate them, and then ask society for fair recompense for your efforts”–vouchers. The game was on.”

Conservative think tanks and advocacy groups across the nation soon launched massive whitewashing campaigns; they started churning out policy reports and books purporting to show how school vouchers would actually benefit minority students. Examples include: We Can Rescue Our Children: The Cure for Chicago's Public School Crisis (Heartland Institute, 1988) and Liberating Schools: Education in the Inner City (Cato Institute, 1990).

By proposing schemes with vouchers weighted to boost racial diversity, or restricted to children from low-income families, the organizations pushing vouchers were able to kill two birds with one stone. They made them acceptable by obscuring the segregationist history, and, crucially, they could now cast themselves as the "new" civil rights movement.

In state after state, politicians were in on the trick. They would sign limited voucher programs into law as “civil rights” measures only to gradually expand the programs to higher-income white families. The Milwaukee program—the first in the country—was originally restricted to families learning less than 175 percent of the federal poverty level. But under Gov. Scott Walker, the income ceiling was recently upped to 300 percent. A married couple with two children can currently earn $78,647, which is far more than the median U.S. family income of $52,250, and still send them off to private schools at the public’s expense. Most students receiving vouchers last year were already attending private schools--meaning vouchers were being used a taxpayer subsidy for private education rather than as a way for students to escape underperforming public schools. Walker's newest voucher expansion in the state budget could suck some $600-800 million out of public schools over 10 years.

This is a pattern across the country. The voucher-like corporate tax credit program in Georgia was originally billed as a way of helping African-American and Latino families, but most scholarships have been awarded “white students from upper income families,” the Southern Education Foundation wrote in a scathing report. In 2013, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana raised the income requirements of the voucher program in the Hoosier State, and last year, Florida's Republican governor Rick Scott lifted the income bar for the state voucher program, allowing a family of four making up to $62,010 a year to participate—$20,000 higher than the previous ceiling.

With upped income ceilings in multiple states—not to mention the universal "Education Savings Account" system signed into law in Nevada last month—ALEC seems poised to ditch the civil rights "marketing plan," (as the rightwing Heartland Institute aptly put it in a 1991 paper) and get back to basics: school vouchers are for privatizing public education.

ALEC makes this abundantly clear when it recommends in its talking points that legislators not adjust the amount granted based on family income. The upshot of this is that vouchers will be a welcome bonus for well-off families whereas poor families may not be able to afford private school tuition even with the extra money.

This, in turn, will lead to increased segregation "based on race, socio-economic status, disability, English language proficience," as public school watchdog Educate Nevada Now warned when Gov. Sandoval signed the universal ESAs into law in June—a prospect that does not seem to faze ALEC legislators who are set to renew and refresh these policies in San Diego today.

School vouchers were never about helping poor, at-risk or minority students. But selling them as social mobility tickets was a useful fiction that for some twenty-five years helped rightwing ideologues and corporate backers gain bipartisan support for an ideological scheme designed to privatize public schools.

But the times they are a-changin'. Wisconsin is well on its way toward limitless voucher schools, and last month, Nevada signed into law a universal "education savings account" allowing parents to send their kids to private or religious schools, or even to home-school them—all on the taxpayers' dime. On the federal level, a proposed amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that would have created a multi-billion-dollar-a-year voucher program was only narrowly defeated in the U.S. Senate.

The American Federation for Children (AFC), chaired by Amway billionaire Betsy DeVos, estimates that vouchers and voucher-like tax-credit schemes currently divert $1.5 billion of public money to private schools annually. But that is not enough. By expanding "pro-school choice legislative majorities" in state houses across the country the organization hopes that $5 billion a year will be siphoned out of public schools by 2020 and applied to for-profit and religious schools.

With vouchers gaining momentum nationwide, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is meeting in San Diego this week, has decided to drop the pretense that vouchers have anything to do with social and racial equity, and is now pushing vouchers for the middle class—a project which, if pursued enough in numbers, will progressively erode the public school system and increase the segregation of students based on race and economic standing.

ALEC Comes Clean, Vouchers Are for the Middle Class

The agenda for this week's ALEC meeting includes a presentation entitled: “Problems in Suburbia: Why Middle-Class Students Need School Choice, Digital Learning and Better Options.”

Perhaps more importantly, ALEC's revisions to three of its "model" voucher bills make clear that it is changing focus from underserved inner-city schools to middle-class suburbia. The talking points at the end of the bills state:

"Legislators … should keep in mind the financial burden many middle-class families face in paying for private schools."

“The authors believe that all children from low- and middle-income families should receive public support for their education regardless of whether they are attending a public or private school."

“The authors do not adjust the amount granted to an ESA [Education Savings Account] student based upon the student's income because states do not adjust the public investment for a student attending a traditional public school or a charter based upon their household income.”

As if to further nail down the point that school vouchers are not about equity, ALEC also advises legislators against including language “banning discrimination in hiring.” But if they choose to do so, they should “take care not to interfere with the ability of religious institutions to hire individuals who share their religious beliefs.”

"Abolishing the Public School System"

ALEC is not the only organization coming clean on vouchers.

At the American Federation for Children’s National Policy Summit held in New Orleans, lobbyist Scott Jensen—who, before being banned from Wisconsin politics for violating the public trust served as chief of staff to governor Tommy Thompson, and was a prime mover behind the first voucher program in the nation—admitted that vouchers were really all about “pursuing Milton Friedman’s free-market vision” even though the ideological agenda was nowadays sugarcoated with “a much more compelling message ... of social justice.”

So what exactly was the brave new world Milton Friedman envisioned when he first floated the idea of school vouchers? While lecturing rightwing state lawmakers at a 2006 ALEC meeting, Friedman jumped at the opportunity to explain what his vision was all about. It had nothing whatsoever to do with helping “indigent” children; no, he explained to thunderous applause, vouchers were all about “abolishing the public school system.”

Here is an excerpt from Friedman’s ALEC speech:

If I were to ask everyone here, what would be your idea of the right way to conduct, to have an educational system constructed, you would say the ideal would be to have parents control and pay for their school's education, just as they pay for their food, their clothing and their housing. That, of course, would leave some indigent and problems of charity. Those should be handled as charity problems, not educational problems. The reason we cannot do that is because taxes are used to pay not for education, but for schools, for teachers.

How do we get from where we are to where we want to be—to a system in which parents control the education of their children? Of course, the ideal way would be to abolish the public school system and eliminate all the taxes that pay for it. Then parents would have enough money to pay for private schools, but you're not gonna to do that. So you have to ask, what are politically feasible ways of solving the problem. The answer, in my opinion, is choice, that you have to change the way government money is directed. Instead of it being used to finance schools and buildings, you should decide how much money you are willing to spend on each child and give that money, provide that money in the form of a voucher to the parents of the children so the parents can choose a school that they regard as best for their child.

Ditching the Marketing Plan

By shifting the focus from poor, minority children to the predominantly white middle class, ALEC has come full circle. Vouchers were first proposed in the 1950s as a way for white families to get around the desegregation resulting from the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision. ALEC first pitched vouchers to legislators in 1984 as a way to “introduce normal market forces" into education and to "dismantle the control and power of" teachers' unions. While there was a narrative of parent "empowerment" at that time, there was not even a passing mention of children—let alone minority children.

But when William Bennett joined Ronald Reagan's cabinet in 1985, vouchers soon gained a unique selling point. In the words of The Black Commentator:

“Former Reagan Education Secretary William Bennett understood what was missing from the voucher political chemistry: minorities. If visible elements of the Black and Latino community could be ensnared in what was then a lily-white scheme, then the Right’s dream of a universal vouchers system to subsidize general privatization of education, might become a practical political project. More urgently, Bennett and other rightwing strategists saw that vouchers had the potential to drive a wedge between Blacks and teachers unions, cracking the Democratic Party coalition. In 1988, Bennett urged the Catholic Church to “seek out the poor, the disadvantaged…and take them in, educate them, and then ask society for fair recompense for your efforts”–vouchers. The game was on.”

Conservative think tanks and advocacy groups across the nation soon launched massive whitewashing campaigns; they started churning out policy reports and books purporting to show how school vouchers would actually benefit minority students. Examples include: We Can Rescue Our Children: The Cure for Chicago's Public School Crisis (Heartland Institute, 1988) and Liberating Schools: Education in the Inner City (Cato Institute, 1990).

By proposing schemes with vouchers weighted to boost racial diversity, or restricted to children from low-income families, the organizations pushing vouchers were able to kill two birds with one stone. They made them acceptable by obscuring the segregationist history, and, crucially, they could now cast themselves as the "new" civil rights movement.

In state after state, politicians were in on the trick. They would sign limited voucher programs into law as “civil rights” measures only to gradually expand the programs to higher-income white families. The Milwaukee program—the first in the country—was originally restricted to families learning less than 175 percent of the federal poverty level. But under Gov. Scott Walker, the income ceiling was recently upped to 300 percent. A married couple with two children can currently earn $78,647, which is far more than the median U.S. family income of $52,250, and still send them off to private schools at the public’s expense. Most students receiving vouchers last year were already attending private schools--meaning vouchers were being used a taxpayer subsidy for private education rather than as a way for students to escape underperforming public schools. Walker's newest voucher expansion in the state budget could suck some $600-800 million out of public schools over 10 years.

This is a pattern across the country. The voucher-like corporate tax credit program in Georgia was originally billed as a way of helping African-American and Latino families, but most scholarships have been awarded “white students from upper income families,” the Southern Education Foundation wrote in a scathing report. In 2013, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana raised the income requirements of the voucher program in the Hoosier State, and last year, Florida's Republican governor Rick Scott lifted the income bar for the state voucher program, allowing a family of four making up to $62,010 a year to participate—$20,000 higher than the previous ceiling.

With upped income ceilings in multiple states—not to mention the universal "Education Savings Account" system signed into law in Nevada last month—ALEC seems poised to ditch the civil rights "marketing plan," (as the rightwing Heartland Institute aptly put it in a 1991 paper) and get back to basics: school vouchers are for privatizing public education.

ALEC makes this abundantly clear when it recommends in its talking points that legislators not adjust the amount granted based on family income. The upshot of this is that vouchers will be a welcome bonus for well-off families whereas poor families may not be able to afford private school tuition even with the extra money.

This, in turn, will lead to increased segregation "based on race, socio-economic status, disability, English language proficience," as public school watchdog Educate Nevada Now warned when Gov. Sandoval signed the universal ESAs into law in June—a prospect that does not seem to faze ALEC legislators who are set to renew and refresh these policies in San Diego today.

Setting a new milestone in the fight for fair pay, the New York fast food wage board today recommended a wage increase in a series of steps to $15 an hour by 2018 in New York City and by 2021 in the rest of the state. The new wage will apply to fast food businesses with 30 or more locations.

When my colleague Catherine Ruetschlin testified before the Wage Board on Long Island, she pointed out:

The fast food industry is the main driver of compensation inequality in the most disparate sector of the economy, with a CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 2013 of over 1000-to-1. The pay disparity in the fast food industry is an extreme outlier, even in an economy where inequality overall has become an increasing point of concern. The outsized ratio is largely driven by the poverty-level wages paid to the industry’s front-line workforce. It is also a prime example of the trend since the Great Recession that shows earners at the very top of the income distribution capturing all of the gains of economic growth and leaving the rest of the population behind.

But while fast food may be an extreme case, it is hardly the only industry – in New York or nationwide – where front-line workers are underpaid and inequality is metastasizing. In fact, our economy is increasingly built on job growth in the most unequal industries: a trend that concentrates more and more income at the top and makes it even more difficult for working people to share in the benefits of economic growth.

That’s why the push to raise wages won’t stop with fast food –or with New York. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to increase the local minimum wage to $15 by 2020.

And today, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are introducing legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour for all job categories nationwide. Although the chances of a steep wage hike being enacted by the Republican-led House and Senate are slim indeed, the proposal is a sign of the movement’s growing momentum.

If fast food workers in New York can win livable pay, there’s hope for everyone earning too little to make ends meet—and for our economy as whole.

Setting a new milestone in the fight for fair pay, the New York fast food wage board today recommended a wage increase in a series of steps to $15 an hour by 2018 in New York City and by 2021 in the rest of the state. The new wage will apply to fast food businesses with 30 or more locations.

When my colleague Catherine Ruetschlin testified before the Wage Board on Long Island, she pointed out:

The fast food industry is the main driver of compensation inequality in the most disparate sector of the economy, with a CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 2013 of over 1000-to-1. The pay disparity in the fast food industry is an extreme outlier, even in an economy where inequality overall has become an increasing point of concern. The outsized ratio is largely driven by the poverty-level wages paid to the industry’s front-line workforce. It is also a prime example of the trend since the Great Recession that shows earners at the very top of the income distribution capturing all of the gains of economic growth and leaving the rest of the population behind.

But while fast food may be an extreme case, it is hardly the only industry – in New York or nationwide – where front-line workers are underpaid and inequality is metastasizing. In fact, our economy is increasingly built on job growth in the most unequal industries: a trend that concentrates more and more income at the top and makes it even more difficult for working people to share in the benefits of economic growth.

That’s why the push to raise wages won’t stop with fast food –or with New York. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to increase the local minimum wage to $15 by 2020.

And today, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are introducing legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour for all job categories nationwide. Although the chances of a steep wage hike being enacted by the Republican-led House and Senate are slim indeed, the proposal is a sign of the movement’s growing momentum.

If fast food workers in New York can win livable pay, there’s hope for everyone earning too little to make ends meet—and for our economy as whole.

Protests by Social Security advocates and objections by Democratic U.S senators who support increasing its payments stopped an amendment to kick 200,000 people off retirement and disability benefits if those individuals had outstanding felony arrest warrants.

“Dropping the Social Security cuts from the Highway bill is the first encouraging sign we’ve seen from this Congress, when it comes to Social Security and Medicare, this year,” said Kim Wright, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare spokeswoman, speaking of the proposal that surfaced Tuesday and was deleted on Wednesday. “We certainly hope they’ve finally realized using these programs as an ATM for everything else under the sun simply won’t fly with seniors who’ve paid into these programs their entire working lives.”

The punitive proposal to slash the benefits of Social Security recipients who may have an outstanding warrant or parole violation—which in many cases is due to unpaid court fees, not criminal activity, according to senior law experts like Justice In Aging—arose as part of a 1,000-page transportation bill as a way to raise $2.3 billion for highway projects.

The proposal has roots in the mid-1990s tough-on-crime heyday in Congress that led to a massive expansion of U.S. prisons and mandatory sentencing. As the Huffington Postreported today, it was “similar to a provision from the 1996 welfare reform law designed to stop benefits to ‘fleeing felons,’ a scheme that was broadened in 2005 and eventually stymied by federal courts. The program had ensnared some innocent people who happened to have the same names as felons and also stopped benefits to some people guilty of things such as writing bad checks in the distant past. In 2009, the Social Security Administration agreed to pay $500 million in back benefits to 80,000 people wrongfully cut off.”

The blocked proposal also was at odds with recent statements from Republicans on the need to take up meaningful criminal justice reforms, such as reduced sentences for non-violent crime. It also would have set a precedent of raiding Social Security funds for unrelated purposes, in this case transportation expenses.

As HuffPo’s congressional reporters noted, pro-Social Security Democrats were not convinced by its purported safeguards. “The measure initially allowed the Social Security Administration to continue benefits to any recipient for ‘good cause,’ but Democrats weren’t impressed. Neither was the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, which said in a statement that the amount of money saved ‘makes it clear that the proposal means cutting off all Social Security and SSI benefits for hundreds of thousands of Americans.’

The proposal to curtail Social Security benefits for people with felony warrants or parole violations has resurfaced every few years, but legal advocates for the elderly say there is amply proof that it would not accomplish its stated goals, but instead needlessly worsen thousands of people’s lives.

“It would not help law enforcement secure the arrest of people they are seeking for serious crimes,” explained Justice In Aging, a senior law group. “Law enforcement is already notified of the whereabouts of every person with a warrant for a felony or an alleged violation of probation or parole who turns up in the Social Security Administration (SSA) databases.”

The anti-poverty law group listed 10 reasons why the proposal was unduly punitive and would have draconian consequences:

“Those most likely to lose benefits are generally those most in need.

A significant number of people will become homeless when they lose their benefits.

Some people have had benefits cut off while residing in nursing homes.

A very high percentage of those who will lose their benefits are people with intellectual disabilities or mental illness.

An unusually high percentage of those who lose benefits are African-Americans.

Many will lose Medicare outpatient (Part B) coverage because of inability to pay the quarterly premium.

Eliminating what may be their only source of income does not help resolve these issues.

Many people never know that a warrant has been issued for them as warrants are often not served on the individual.

These warrants are often not easily resolved since many of those who lose benefits live far from the issuing jurisdiction.

SSA will have increased administrative costs for processing appeals and requests for waiver of recovery of overpayments.

“A majority of those affected who are receiving benefits based on disability fall into these categories,” it said. “Large numbers of those who will lose benefits had warrants routinely issued when they were unable to pay a fine or court fee or probation supervision fee.”

Protests by Social Security advocates and objections by Democratic U.S senators who support increasing its payments stopped an amendment to kick 200,000 people off retirement and disability benefits if those individuals had outstanding felony arrest warrants.

“Dropping the Social Security cuts from the Highway bill is the first encouraging sign we’ve seen from this Congress, when it comes to Social Security and Medicare, this year,” said Kim Wright, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare spokeswoman, speaking of the proposal that surfaced Tuesday and was deleted on Wednesday. “We certainly hope they’ve finally realized using these programs as an ATM for everything else under the sun simply won’t fly with seniors who’ve paid into these programs their entire working lives.”

The punitive proposal to slash the benefits of Social Security recipients who may have an outstanding warrant or parole violation—which in many cases is due to unpaid court fees, not criminal activity, according to senior law experts like Justice In Aging—arose as part of a 1,000-page transportation bill as a way to raise $2.3 billion for highway projects.

The proposal has roots in the mid-1990s tough-on-crime heyday in Congress that led to a massive expansion of U.S. prisons and mandatory sentencing. As the Huffington Postreported today, it was “similar to a provision from the 1996 welfare reform law designed to stop benefits to ‘fleeing felons,’ a scheme that was broadened in 2005 and eventually stymied by federal courts. The program had ensnared some innocent people who happened to have the same names as felons and also stopped benefits to some people guilty of things such as writing bad checks in the distant past. In 2009, the Social Security Administration agreed to pay $500 million in back benefits to 80,000 people wrongfully cut off.”

The blocked proposal also was at odds with recent statements from Republicans on the need to take up meaningful criminal justice reforms, such as reduced sentences for non-violent crime. It also would have set a precedent of raiding Social Security funds for unrelated purposes, in this case transportation expenses.

As HuffPo’s congressional reporters noted, pro-Social Security Democrats were not convinced by its purported safeguards. “The measure initially allowed the Social Security Administration to continue benefits to any recipient for ‘good cause,’ but Democrats weren’t impressed. Neither was the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, which said in a statement that the amount of money saved ‘makes it clear that the proposal means cutting off all Social Security and SSI benefits for hundreds of thousands of Americans.’

The proposal to curtail Social Security benefits for people with felony warrants or parole violations has resurfaced every few years, but legal advocates for the elderly say there is amply proof that it would not accomplish its stated goals, but instead needlessly worsen thousands of people’s lives.

“It would not help law enforcement secure the arrest of people they are seeking for serious crimes,” explained Justice In Aging, a senior law group. “Law enforcement is already notified of the whereabouts of every person with a warrant for a felony or an alleged violation of probation or parole who turns up in the Social Security Administration (SSA) databases.”

The anti-poverty law group listed 10 reasons why the proposal was unduly punitive and would have draconian consequences:

“Those most likely to lose benefits are generally those most in need.

A significant number of people will become homeless when they lose their benefits.

Some people have had benefits cut off while residing in nursing homes.

A very high percentage of those who will lose their benefits are people with intellectual disabilities or mental illness.

An unusually high percentage of those who lose benefits are African-Americans.

Many will lose Medicare outpatient (Part B) coverage because of inability to pay the quarterly premium.

Eliminating what may be their only source of income does not help resolve these issues.

Many people never know that a warrant has been issued for them as warrants are often not served on the individual.

These warrants are often not easily resolved since many of those who lose benefits live far from the issuing jurisdiction.

SSA will have increased administrative costs for processing appeals and requests for waiver of recovery of overpayments.

“A majority of those affected who are receiving benefits based on disability fall into these categories,” it said. “Large numbers of those who will lose benefits had warrants routinely issued when they were unable to pay a fine or court fee or probation supervision fee.”

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/alecs-scary-corporate-agenda-7-their-most-anti-democratic-and-science-denying-ideasALEC's Scary Corporate Agenda: 7 of Its Most Anti-Democratic and Science-Denying Ideashttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/103042770/0/alternet_labor~ALECs-Scary-Corporate-Agenda-of-Its-Most-AntiDemocratic-and-ScienceDenying-Ideas

ALEC's annual gathering revealed how right-wingers will push dangerous legislation across the country.

Starting Wednesday this week, the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, or "ALEC," will bring together hundreds of corporate lobbyists with state and local politicians at a posh hotel in San Diego for the group's annual meeting.

Republican presidential candidate and ALEC alum Scott Walker, who has signed over 20 ALEC bills into law, will address this month's meeting, as well as 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, who participated in ALEC meetings before he joined the U.S. Senate.

ALEC, which drafts and markets model bills for legislators, has had a mixed year. Over a dozen companies, including tech giants Google and Facebook, stopped funding the group over its role in promoting climate change denial, yet after the 2014 elections gave Republicans control of 68 out of 98 state legislative bodies, some states have had few impediments to the corporate-friendly legislation that ALEC peddles.

For example, in just the first half of 2015, Wisconsin became a "right to work" state and repealed the prevailing wage, another pro-union law; Michigan blocked local control over minimum wage and paid sick days; and Texas banned cities from regulating fracking.

A look at the San Diego ALEC agenda tells us more about what ALEC has planned for 2015 and beyond. Here are seven major initiatives that the right-wing group seeks to impose on America.

1. Attack Federal Efforts to Rein in Carbon Pollution

Even though California is suffering from a historic drought, the climate change deniers on the Environment and Agriculture Task Force will be working on new ways to stymie action addressing carbon emissions.

In recent years, ALEC has targeted the Environmental Protection Agency's "Clean Power Plan," which is a set of rules limiting carbon dioxide pollution from coal plants. At the behest of its funders like Koch Industries, Peabody Energy, and American Electric Power, ALEC has been organizing a state-level campaign against the rules: the group organized legislators to press their state attorneys general into joining litigation backed by the energy industry that challenges the regulations, adopted a model resolution attacking the plan, and last December adopted a model bill that would create new hurdles for the Plan's implementation.

At this month's meeting, the Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force--which is chaired by American Electric Power-- will consider a "State Power Accountability and Reliability Charter (SPARC)," which seeks to undermine the Clean Power Plan by declaring that state agencies cannot implement it. And, the task force's "Energy Subcommittee" will hold a discussion on "State Responses to EPA’s Proposed Clean Power Plan."

Another model bill on the ALEC agenda is the "Environmental Impact Litigation Act," which effectively allows corporate interests to hire a state's Department of Justice as their own private attorneys. The bill creates a corporate-backed fund for states to sue over federal environmental laws--such as the EPA's Clean Power Plan--guided by an "environmental impact litigation advisory committee" made up of political appointees and representatives of "individuals representing agriculture and energy trade commissions."

2. Undermining Renewable Energy

ALEC will also double-down on its attacks on rooftop solar and renewable energy.

For the last few years, ALEC and funders like Edison Electric Energy have promoted bills to repeal state Renewable Portfolio Standards, which require utilities to provide some power from renewable sources. Despite support from the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity, ALEC has had limited success in pushing these bills into law, so the group is looking for new ways to undermine renewable standards.

The latest effort is called an "Act Providing Incentives for Carbon Reduction Investments." The industry-friendly bill would free utilities from the requirement that they produce more energy from renewable sources, as long as they claim to make "carbon reduction investments"--which includes controversial programs like carbon sequestration, or campaigns to encourage consumers to reduce energy use. This would undermine the purpose of the renewable standards, which is to promote a shift to renewable energy.

3. Thwart Rooftop Solar

Solar will also be on the agenda. ALEC has tried in a variety of ways to reduce incentives for individuals and businesses to build rooftop solar panels by raising the costs. Over the last few years, ALEC and its utility industry funders have promoted bills to eliminate "net metering," which gives solar users a credit for excess energy they feed back into the grid, and have been behind efforts to impose a surcharge on rooftop solar users. With few exceptions, these efforts have failed, thanks to strong support for solar from conservatives who like the self-sufficiency that rooftop solar provides, and the fact that in many states the solar industry is creating manufacturing and construction jobs.

In San Diego, ALEC will consider a proposal called a "Resolution Concerning Special Markets for Direct Solar Power Sales" that aims to prop-up the monopolies enjoyed by traditional utilities and oppose direct-to-consumer solar sales. It will be coupled with a presentation called "Consumer Protection Concerns Surround Rooftop Solar Model Policy." In many states, solar developers are allowed to install panels on a customer's home or business for free, then sell the power directly to the consumer, rather than through a monopoly utility provider like Peabody Energy.

Direct-to-consumer energy sales that bypass heavily-regulated monopoly utilities might be viewed as the sort of "market disruption" that free market adherents claim to support. After all, ALEC has celebrated the emergence of ride-sharing companies like Uber because they disrupt taxi monopolies and allow direct-to-consumer ride sales.

The key difference is that ALEC is bankrolled by utility companies. ALEC funders like Peabody Energy, Duke Energy, and Murray Energy are not pleased about the threat to profits posed by direct-to-consumer solar, so therefore it must be crushed, free market principles be damned. Incredibly, the "Resolution Concerning Special Markets for Direct Solar Power Sales" declares that direct-to-consumer solar is "antithetical to free markets."

At this meeting, ALEC is denying more than climate change. It also is apparently denying the mass die-off of bees, which threatens food supplies--two-thirds of crops require bee pollination--and which scientists have linked to type of insecticide produced by ALEC member Bayer and other companies. Until recently, Bayer had a representative on ALEC's corporate board and has been listed as the ALEC corporate co-chair in states like Massachusetts, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Texas.

Bayer has been actively pushing back on the notion that its products contribute to a bee colony collapse. According to a report from Friends of the Earth, Bayer recently launched a "Bee Care Tour” as well as a children’s book "in which a friendly neighborhood beekeeper tells young Toby that the bees are getting sick, but 'not to worry' it's just a problem with mites, and there is special medicine to make bees healthy"--medicine that Bayer produces, of course.

At this month's ALEC meeting, bee die-off denialists took a clumsy stab at being clever: in an apparent reference to "Apocalypse Now" (or perhaps Wayne's World), they titled their presentation, "'Beepocalypse Not."

Local democracy has led to some significant policy wins in recent years, with cities like Philadelphia guaranteeing workers paid sick days, and places like Denton, Texas banning fracking. ALEC's response to cities and counties acting as laboratories of democracy has traditionally been to crush it, through state "preemption" laws that prohibit local governments from raising the minimum wage, or regulating GMOs, or building municipal broadband.

With ACCE, ALEC and its corporate backers are taking the fight directly to the local level, urging city and county officials on the one hand to give up their authority to protect the health and economic well-being of their constituents, and on the other to push policy measures to advance corporate interests.​

The biggest proactive ACCE initiative is a push for local right to work laws. In the months following a local right to work workshop at ACCE’s meeting last December, twelve Kentucky counties have enacted the anti-union measures, and similar proposals have been floated in states like Illinois and Pennsylvania. But enacting right to work on the local level likely violates federal law, so groups like the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and the state Chamber of Commerce are bankrolling the legal defense of counties that get sued.

Local right to work is again on the ACCE agenda for this month's meeting, with the group expected to officially adopt a Local Right to Work model bill.

It will also hold a workshop aimed a propping up another ACCE funder, the payday loan industry: the presentation is titled "Payday Loans; 'Local Free Market Solutions for a Difficult Policy Problem.'”

Besides pushing policy measures that advance the interests of ACCE's funders, ACCE is also urging local electeds to accept state preemption laws.

In a workshop titled “Understanding State Preemption Laws," ALEC and ACCE will pitch local officials on why they should let state legislatures steamroll their authority to protect the health and economic well-being of their constituents. The workshop will be moderated by Libby Szabo, a former Colorado state legislator and ALEC state chair who is now a local official: she resigned from the state legislature just two months after winning reelection to take a county commissioner appointment, leading to charges from the editorial board of the conservative Denver Post that she was "thumbing her nose at voters."

The lesson here is that ALEC supports local control when it advances the interests of its funders, yet actively works to undermine local democracy when it threatens corporate profits.

ALEC's hypocrisy around the idea "government that is closest to the people governs best" isn't just limited to city-state relations. Even though ALEC has fought federal policies like healthcare reform and the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of carbon emissions under the guise of “state’s rights,” at this month's meeting it will push policies that run contrary even to that notion. Here again, corporate profits trump anything resembling principles.

ALEC will hold a workshop telling state legislators that they should embrace federal preemption of state chemical regulation, which happens to benefit ALEC funders like the American Chemistry Council. The "Environmental Health and Regulation Subcommittee" will hold a presentation titled "Supporting Chemical Regulation Preemption Supports Manufacturing," where legislators will apparently be told it is just swell that the federal Toxic Substances Control Act will prohibit states from enacting tougher chemical regulations.

And, the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force will consider a proposed "Resolution Urging Congress to Eliminate Discriminatory State and Local Taxes on Automobile Renters," which calls on Congress to preempt discriminatory state and local taxes on car rentals. It is hard to imagine a more blatant piece of corporate-friendly legislation, yet ALEC continues to insist that only legislators can propose model bills at its meetings.

5. Amend the Constitution

In recent years, one of ALEC's top priorities has been to add a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And it will be a major focus of this month's meeting.

A balanced budget amendment is an idea that has been bouncing around for decades--even though it would cripple the federal government's ability to spend on earned benefit programs like Social Security, and block Congress from responding to economic downturns or natural disasters--but what is unique about ALEC's push is that they are trying to do it via an Article V Constitutional Convention.

Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides that thirty-four states (two-thirds) can trigger a convention to propose an amendment, which must then be ratified by 38 states (three-fourths). Although this seems like a tall order, in the past year over a dozen states have passed resolutions calling for an Article V convention, adding to at least twelve other states that enacted resolutions years ago. The proposal has been supported by Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).

Key to the Article V push has been the "Jeffersonian Project," the 501(c)(4) group that ALEC formed in 2013 amidst complaints from Common Cause and CMD that ALEC was violating its 501(c)(3) charitable status by engaging in excessive lobbying. In order to deflect allegations of lobbying, the "Jeffersonian Project" is now used to urge legislators to pass ALEC model legislation, an activity that ALEC used to do directly.

This year, the Article V strategy dominates the agenda of ALEC's Task Force on Federalism and International Relations, with five presentations and two pieces of draft legislation. The task force's private sector chair is a representative of Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax group founded by Grover Norquist. And, there will be two separate ALEC-wide policy workshops on the Article V effort, as well as a reception and dinner titled "States Constitutionally Saving “The American Dream” Summit Via Balanced Budget Amendment Convention."

Throughout U.S. history, the Constitution has only been amended through a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress on a specific amendment, which is then ratified by two-thirds of state legislatures. In contrast, the Article V strategy triggers a full constitutional convention, and it is unclear whether the delegates could be confined to only passing one amendment. This fear of a "runaway convention" has led critics on both the right and left to oppose the Article V strategy.

ALEC has tried to quell these fears through a companion bill declaring that delegates to a convention may not vote on other issues besides a balanced budget amendment. Yet, at least some amendment supporters want to open up the Article V process and amendment the constitution to address an array of issues, like limiting the Commerce Clause, banning international law in the U.S., and placing term limits on the Supreme Court, among other items from a right-wing wishlist.

The key driver of the broader Article V amendment effort is Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG), a group led by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler, and whose board includes Wisconsinite Eric O'Keefe. CSG, which receives most of its funding through foundations such as DonorsTrust that cloak their donors' identities, has also backed multiple lawsuits related to the "John Doe" investigation into coordination between Governor Walker's campaign and Wisconsin Club for Growth, where O'Keefe is a director.

CSG's Convention of States effort has been endorsed by Mike Huckabee (who will be addressing the ALEC conference) and also attracted support from the likes of Glenn Beck. CSG's "Compact for America" appears on the ALEC agenda with both a presentation and a model bill, and Meckler will also address the conference on July 24.

Another group pushing an Article V amendment is Compact for America, a Texas-based group advised by Nick Dranias, formerly of the Goldwater Institute, and chaired by former Goldwater chair Thomas C. Patterson. This group also is promoting a model bill at the ALEC meeting, and will hold a full breakout session on July 23.

Wisconsin State Rep. Chris Taylor attended a session on ALEC's Article V plans at the group's 2013 conference. When she expressed hesitation that the public would support the effort, she was told, "You really don’t need people to do this. You just need control over the legislature and you need money, and we have both."

6. Continue Fighting "Obamacare"

ALEC has long tried to undermine the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act. It produced the "State Legislators' Guide to Repealing Obamacare," and has promoted bills to try blocking the individual mandate in states, and to prohibit insurers from providing subsidies to low-income residents, and to reject the insurance “exchanges” where individuals can buy insurance (which would have had serious repercussions if the U.S. Supreme Court ruled differently in King v. Burwell).

Despite repeated failures to overturn the Affordable Care Act through Congress and the courts, ALEC is continuing to fight the law through the states.

At this month's meeting, the Health and Human Services Task Force will consider a bill to limit expansion of Medicaid benefits within the state, and the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force will have a resolution on the purported negative impact of Medicaid expansion under the healthcare law. The task force will also consider a resolution opposing federal "maintenance of effort" requirements, like those in Obamacare and also with education funding.

7. Fighting to Protect Dark Money

After spending hundreds of millions of undisclosed funds on state and federal elections, ALEC's corporate members will also demand that state legislators preserve their "right" to anonymously spend money on politics and buy influence in state legislatures.

A July 23 workshop titled "Dark Money Debate: What Lawmakers Need to Know about the First Amendment and Anonymous Political Speech" will promote the idea that transparency in elections is a bad thing. David Keating of the Center for Competitive Politics and Jon Riches of the Goldwater Institute are listed as presenters.

It is little surprise that corporate interests would peddle secrecy to the hundreds of Republican state legislators at ALEC.

ALEC's funders, like the billionaire Koch brothers, have spent millions in "dark money"--electoral spending that evades donor disclosure laws--in recent years, secret spending which has increased exponentially since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision.

Disclosure of electoral spending has widespread support among the public, and it still has support among many Republican state lawmakers. ALEC, it seems, is trying to change that.

This isn't ALEC's first foray into this issue. Its 2010 "Resolution in Support of Citizens United" opposes both the disclosure and shareholder participation endorsed by the majority in Citizens United. In 2011, ALEC lobbied legislators in states like New York urging them to reject a proposal requiring corporations get shareholder approval for political spending. And at ALEC's meeting last December, ALEC held a similarly themed workshop called "Playing the Shame Game: A Campaign that Threatens Corporate Free Speech."

ALEC's annual gathering revealed how right-wingers will push dangerous legislation across the country.

Starting Wednesday this week, the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, or "ALEC," will bring together hundreds of corporate lobbyists with state and local politicians at a posh hotel in San Diego for the group's annual meeting.

Republican presidential candidate and ALEC alum Scott Walker, who has signed over 20 ALEC bills into law, will address this month's meeting, as well as 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, who participated in ALEC meetings before he joined the U.S. Senate.

ALEC, which drafts and markets model bills for legislators, has had a mixed year. Over a dozen companies, including tech giants Google and Facebook, stopped funding the group over its role in promoting climate change denial, yet after the 2014 elections gave Republicans control of 68 out of 98 state legislative bodies, some states have had few impediments to the corporate-friendly legislation that ALEC peddles.

For example, in just the first half of 2015, Wisconsin became a "right to work" state and repealed the prevailing wage, another pro-union law; Michigan blocked local control over minimum wage and paid sick days; and Texas banned cities from regulating fracking.

A look at the San Diego ALEC agenda tells us more about what ALEC has planned for 2015 and beyond. Here are seven major initiatives that the right-wing group seeks to impose on America.

1. Attack Federal Efforts to Rein in Carbon Pollution

Even though California is suffering from a historic drought, the climate change deniers on the Environment and Agriculture Task Force will be working on new ways to stymie action addressing carbon emissions.

In recent years, ALEC has targeted the Environmental Protection Agency's "Clean Power Plan," which is a set of rules limiting carbon dioxide pollution from coal plants. At the behest of its funders like Koch Industries, Peabody Energy, and American Electric Power, ALEC has been organizing a state-level campaign against the rules: the group organized legislators to press their state attorneys general into joining litigation backed by the energy industry that challenges the regulations, adopted a model resolution attacking the plan, and last December adopted a model bill that would create new hurdles for the Plan's implementation.

At this month's meeting, the Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force--which is chaired by American Electric Power-- will consider a "State Power Accountability and Reliability Charter (SPARC)," which seeks to undermine the Clean Power Plan by declaring that state agencies cannot implement it. And, the task force's "Energy Subcommittee" will hold a discussion on "State Responses to EPA’s Proposed Clean Power Plan."

Another model bill on the ALEC agenda is the "Environmental Impact Litigation Act," which effectively allows corporate interests to hire a state's Department of Justice as their own private attorneys. The bill creates a corporate-backed fund for states to sue over federal environmental laws--such as the EPA's Clean Power Plan--guided by an "environmental impact litigation advisory committee" made up of political appointees and representatives of "individuals representing agriculture and energy trade commissions."

2. Undermining Renewable Energy

ALEC will also double-down on its attacks on rooftop solar and renewable energy.

For the last few years, ALEC and funders like Edison Electric Energy have promoted bills to repeal state Renewable Portfolio Standards, which require utilities to provide some power from renewable sources. Despite support from the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity, ALEC has had limited success in pushing these bills into law, so the group is looking for new ways to undermine renewable standards.

The latest effort is called an "Act Providing Incentives for Carbon Reduction Investments." The industry-friendly bill would free utilities from the requirement that they produce more energy from renewable sources, as long as they claim to make "carbon reduction investments"--which includes controversial programs like carbon sequestration, or campaigns to encourage consumers to reduce energy use. This would undermine the purpose of the renewable standards, which is to promote a shift to renewable energy.

3. Thwart Rooftop Solar

Solar will also be on the agenda. ALEC has tried in a variety of ways to reduce incentives for individuals and businesses to build rooftop solar panels by raising the costs. Over the last few years, ALEC and its utility industry funders have promoted bills to eliminate "net metering," which gives solar users a credit for excess energy they feed back into the grid, and have been behind efforts to impose a surcharge on rooftop solar users. With few exceptions, these efforts have failed, thanks to strong support for solar from conservatives who like the self-sufficiency that rooftop solar provides, and the fact that in many states the solar industry is creating manufacturing and construction jobs.

In San Diego, ALEC will consider a proposal called a "Resolution Concerning Special Markets for Direct Solar Power Sales" that aims to prop-up the monopolies enjoyed by traditional utilities and oppose direct-to-consumer solar sales. It will be coupled with a presentation called "Consumer Protection Concerns Surround Rooftop Solar Model Policy." In many states, solar developers are allowed to install panels on a customer's home or business for free, then sell the power directly to the consumer, rather than through a monopoly utility provider like Peabody Energy.

Direct-to-consumer energy sales that bypass heavily-regulated monopoly utilities might be viewed as the sort of "market disruption" that free market adherents claim to support. After all, ALEC has celebrated the emergence of ride-sharing companies like Uber because they disrupt taxi monopolies and allow direct-to-consumer ride sales.

The key difference is that ALEC is bankrolled by utility companies. ALEC funders like Peabody Energy, Duke Energy, and Murray Energy are not pleased about the threat to profits posed by direct-to-consumer solar, so therefore it must be crushed, free market principles be damned. Incredibly, the "Resolution Concerning Special Markets for Direct Solar Power Sales" declares that direct-to-consumer solar is "antithetical to free markets."

At this meeting, ALEC is denying more than climate change. It also is apparently denying the mass die-off of bees, which threatens food supplies--two-thirds of crops require bee pollination--and which scientists have linked to type of insecticide produced by ALEC member Bayer and other companies. Until recently, Bayer had a representative on ALEC's corporate board and has been listed as the ALEC corporate co-chair in states like Massachusetts, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Texas.

Bayer has been actively pushing back on the notion that its products contribute to a bee colony collapse. According to a report from Friends of the Earth, Bayer recently launched a "Bee Care Tour” as well as a children’s book "in which a friendly neighborhood beekeeper tells young Toby that the bees are getting sick, but 'not to worry' it's just a problem with mites, and there is special medicine to make bees healthy"--medicine that Bayer produces, of course.

At this month's ALEC meeting, bee die-off denialists took a clumsy stab at being clever: in an apparent reference to "Apocalypse Now" (or perhaps Wayne's World), they titled their presentation, "'Beepocalypse Not."

Local democracy has led to some significant policy wins in recent years, with cities like Philadelphia guaranteeing workers paid sick days, and places like Denton, Texas banning fracking. ALEC's response to cities and counties acting as laboratories of democracy has traditionally been to crush it, through state "preemption" laws that prohibit local governments from raising the minimum wage, or regulating GMOs, or building municipal broadband.

With ACCE, ALEC and its corporate backers are taking the fight directly to the local level, urging city and county officials on the one hand to give up their authority to protect the health and economic well-being of their constituents, and on the other to push policy measures to advance corporate interests.​

The biggest proactive ACCE initiative is a push for local right to work laws. In the months following a local right to work workshop at ACCE’s meeting last December, twelve Kentucky counties have enacted the anti-union measures, and similar proposals have been floated in states like Illinois and Pennsylvania. But enacting right to work on the local level likely violates federal law, so groups like the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and the state Chamber of Commerce are bankrolling the legal defense of counties that get sued.

Local right to work is again on the ACCE agenda for this month's meeting, with the group expected to officially adopt a Local Right to Work model bill.

It will also hold a workshop aimed a propping up another ACCE funder, the payday loan industry: the presentation is titled "Payday Loans; 'Local Free Market Solutions for a Difficult Policy Problem.'”

Besides pushing policy measures that advance the interests of ACCE's funders, ACCE is also urging local electeds to accept state preemption laws.

In a workshop titled “Understanding State Preemption Laws," ALEC and ACCE will pitch local officials on why they should let state legislatures steamroll their authority to protect the health and economic well-being of their constituents. The workshop will be moderated by Libby Szabo, a former Colorado state legislator and ALEC state chair who is now a local official: she resigned from the state legislature just two months after winning reelection to take a county commissioner appointment, leading to charges from the editorial board of the conservative Denver Post that she was "thumbing her nose at voters."

The lesson here is that ALEC supports local control when it advances the interests of its funders, yet actively works to undermine local democracy when it threatens corporate profits.

ALEC's hypocrisy around the idea "government that is closest to the people governs best" isn't just limited to city-state relations. Even though ALEC has fought federal policies like healthcare reform and the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of carbon emissions under the guise of “state’s rights,” at this month's meeting it will push policies that run contrary even to that notion. Here again, corporate profits trump anything resembling principles.

ALEC will hold a workshop telling state legislators that they should embrace federal preemption of state chemical regulation, which happens to benefit ALEC funders like the American Chemistry Council. The "Environmental Health and Regulation Subcommittee" will hold a presentation titled "Supporting Chemical Regulation Preemption Supports Manufacturing," where legislators will apparently be told it is just swell that the federal Toxic Substances Control Act will prohibit states from enacting tougher chemical regulations.

And, the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force will consider a proposed "Resolution Urging Congress to Eliminate Discriminatory State and Local Taxes on Automobile Renters," which calls on Congress to preempt discriminatory state and local taxes on car rentals. It is hard to imagine a more blatant piece of corporate-friendly legislation, yet ALEC continues to insist that only legislators can propose model bills at its meetings.

5. Amend the Constitution

In recent years, one of ALEC's top priorities has been to add a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And it will be a major focus of this month's meeting.

A balanced budget amendment is an idea that has been bouncing around for decades--even though it would cripple the federal government's ability to spend on earned benefit programs like Social Security, and block Congress from responding to economic downturns or natural disasters--but what is unique about ALEC's push is that they are trying to do it via an Article V Constitutional Convention.

Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides that thirty-four states (two-thirds) can trigger a convention to propose an amendment, which must then be ratified by 38 states (three-fourths). Although this seems like a tall order, in the past year over a dozen states have passed resolutions calling for an Article V convention, adding to at least twelve other states that enacted resolutions years ago. The proposal has been supported by Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).

Key to the Article V push has been the "Jeffersonian Project," the 501(c)(4) group that ALEC formed in 2013 amidst complaints from Common Cause and CMD that ALEC was violating its 501(c)(3) charitable status by engaging in excessive lobbying. In order to deflect allegations of lobbying, the "Jeffersonian Project" is now used to urge legislators to pass ALEC model legislation, an activity that ALEC used to do directly.

This year, the Article V strategy dominates the agenda of ALEC's Task Force on Federalism and International Relations, with five presentations and two pieces of draft legislation. The task force's private sector chair is a representative of Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax group founded by Grover Norquist. And, there will be two separate ALEC-wide policy workshops on the Article V effort, as well as a reception and dinner titled "States Constitutionally Saving “The American Dream” Summit Via Balanced Budget Amendment Convention."

Throughout U.S. history, the Constitution has only been amended through a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress on a specific amendment, which is then ratified by two-thirds of state legislatures. In contrast, the Article V strategy triggers a full constitutional convention, and it is unclear whether the delegates could be confined to only passing one amendment. This fear of a "runaway convention" has led critics on both the right and left to oppose the Article V strategy.

ALEC has tried to quell these fears through a companion bill declaring that delegates to a convention may not vote on other issues besides a balanced budget amendment. Yet, at least some amendment supporters want to open up the Article V process and amendment the constitution to address an array of issues, like limiting the Commerce Clause, banning international law in the U.S., and placing term limits on the Supreme Court, among other items from a right-wing wishlist.

The key driver of the broader Article V amendment effort is Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG), a group led by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler, and whose board includes Wisconsinite Eric O'Keefe. CSG, which receives most of its funding through foundations such as DonorsTrust that cloak their donors' identities, has also backed multiple lawsuits related to the "John Doe" investigation into coordination between Governor Walker's campaign and Wisconsin Club for Growth, where O'Keefe is a director.

CSG's Convention of States effort has been endorsed by Mike Huckabee (who will be addressing the ALEC conference) and also attracted support from the likes of Glenn Beck. CSG's "Compact for America" appears on the ALEC agenda with both a presentation and a model bill, and Meckler will also address the conference on July 24.

Another group pushing an Article V amendment is Compact for America, a Texas-based group advised by Nick Dranias, formerly of the Goldwater Institute, and chaired by former Goldwater chair Thomas C. Patterson. This group also is promoting a model bill at the ALEC meeting, and will hold a full breakout session on July 23.

Wisconsin State Rep. Chris Taylor attended a session on ALEC's Article V plans at the group's 2013 conference. When she expressed hesitation that the public would support the effort, she was told, "You really don’t need people to do this. You just need control over the legislature and you need money, and we have both."

6. Continue Fighting "Obamacare"

ALEC has long tried to undermine the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act. It produced the "State Legislators' Guide to Repealing Obamacare," and has promoted bills to try blocking the individual mandate in states, and to prohibit insurers from providing subsidies to low-income residents, and to reject the insurance “exchanges” where individuals can buy insurance (which would have had serious repercussions if the U.S. Supreme Court ruled differently in King v. Burwell).

Despite repeated failures to overturn the Affordable Care Act through Congress and the courts, ALEC is continuing to fight the law through the states.

At this month's meeting, the Health and Human Services Task Force will consider a bill to limit expansion of Medicaid benefits within the state, and the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force will have a resolution on the purported negative impact of Medicaid expansion under the healthcare law. The task force will also consider a resolution opposing federal "maintenance of effort" requirements, like those in Obamacare and also with education funding.

7. Fighting to Protect Dark Money

After spending hundreds of millions of undisclosed funds on state and federal elections, ALEC's corporate members will also demand that state legislators preserve their "right" to anonymously spend money on politics and buy influence in state legislatures.

A July 23 workshop titled "Dark Money Debate: What Lawmakers Need to Know about the First Amendment and Anonymous Political Speech" will promote the idea that transparency in elections is a bad thing. David Keating of the Center for Competitive Politics and Jon Riches of the Goldwater Institute are listed as presenters.

It is little surprise that corporate interests would peddle secrecy to the hundreds of Republican state legislators at ALEC.

ALEC's funders, like the billionaire Koch brothers, have spent millions in "dark money"--electoral spending that evades donor disclosure laws--in recent years, secret spending which has increased exponentially since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision.

Disclosure of electoral spending has widespread support among the public, and it still has support among many Republican state lawmakers. ALEC, it seems, is trying to change that.

This isn't ALEC's first foray into this issue. Its 2010 "Resolution in Support of Citizens United" opposes both the disclosure and shareholder participation endorsed by the majority in Citizens United. In 2011, ALEC lobbied legislators in states like New York urging them to reject a proposal requiring corporations get shareholder approval for political spending. And at ALEC's meeting last December, ALEC held a similarly themed workshop called "Playing the Shame Game: A Campaign that Threatens Corporate Free Speech."

The Social Security Board of Trustees has just released its annual report to Congress. The most important takeaways are that Social Security has a large and growing surplus, and its future cost is fully affordable.

It is sometimes reported that Social Security's current costs exceed its revenue, but if that happened, we wouldn't need a report to tell us. The whole country would know, because 59 million beneficiaries would not get their earned benefits as they now do every month. By law, Social Security can only pay benefits if it has sufficient revenue to cover every penny of costs - administrative as well as benefit costs. The claim that Social Security is running a deficit counts only Social Security's income from its premiums, often called payroll contributions or taxes, and disregards one or both of its other two dedicated sources of income: investment income and dedicated income tax revenue. When income from all of Social Security's revenue sources is counted, Social Security ran a $25 billion surplus in 2014.

Social Security is projected to run a surplus again this year. And next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. These annual surpluses simply add to its large and growing accumulated surplus.

Over the next 5 years, Social Security has sufficient funds to pay every penny of benefits and every penny of associated administrative costs. That is true for the next 10 years. And also the next 15 years. Over the next 25 years, Social Security is projecting a modest shortfall of just .51 percent of GDP. Over the next 50 years, the projection is just 0.8 of GDP. And over the next 75 years, the shortfall is projected to be just 0.96 percent of GDP. Let's put those percentages in perspective. Military spending after the 9/11 terrorist attack increased 1.1 percent, of GDP. Spending on public education nationwide went up 2.8 percent of GDP between 1950 and 1975, when the baby boom generation showed up as school children.

The fact is that, as the richest nation in the world at the richest point in our history, not only can we afford the current levels of Social Security protections, we can afford to greatly expand Social Security. At its most expensive, in 2035 when all baby boomers are all over age 70, and indeed at the end of the 21st century, we are projected to spend considerably less, as a percentage of GDP, than Germany, France, Japan, Austria and most other industrialized countries spend on their counterpart programs today.

It is time to expand Social Security. Social Security's benefits are modest and don't cover a number of eventualities, such as parental leave and sick days, which the Social Security programs of other countries cover. It is time to bolster the economic security of America's working families.

Social Security is a solution. It is a solution to a looming retirement income crisis where most workers will be unable to retire without a drastic reduction in their standards of living. Social Security is the most universal, secure, and efficient source of retirement income that we have, providing a guaranteed, inflation-protected source of income that one will never outlive. And, expanding Social Security helps more than retirees. Because disability and survivor benefits are derived from the same benefit formula, increasing its benefits automatically improves the income of non-aged workers and their families. Adding new benefit protections, such as paid family leave and paid sick days would do even more.

Virtually all politicians have expressed concern about growing income and wealth inequality. Expanding Social Security and requiring millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share will begin to put brakes on this dangerously and rapidly growing upward redistribution of wealth.

Although today's Congress does not seem likely to expand Social Security benefits, the Democrats could force their hand. Though one single payment is deducted from paychecks for Social Security, its revenue is divided into two separate trusts. From time to time rebalancing is required. One would think that Social Security trustees have the authority to do this simple rebalancing themselves. But that is not how the law works. Instead, rebalancing requires an act of Congress.

The Trustees Report once again projects that Congress must act before the end of 2016 to rebalance Social Security's trust funds. If that is not done, Social Security's disability benefits will be cut by around 20 percent. Rebalancing should be routine and has been so in the past.

However, today's Republican leaders have already made clear, through a rule adopted on the very first day of the new Congress, that they plan to hold rebalancing hostage this time around. Presumably, they are seeking a bipartisan deal, worked out behind closed doors, that cuts Social Security and enacts other unpopular changes. Instead, the Democrats should hold firm for winning policy and politics. They should propose enactment of one of the many Democratic bills which expands Social Security.

For example, The Social Security Expansion Act, sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), expands benefits in important ways while ensuring that all benefits, including disability insurance benefits, can be paid through 2065. The Social Security 2100 Act, introduced by Representative John Larson (D-CT), expands benefits while ensuring that all benefits, including disability insurance benefits, can be paid through 2090. Indeed, 43 Senators and 116 House members are on record in favor of expansion, in conjunction with ensuring that the wealthiest among us at long last pay their fair share.

Expansion is excellent policy. It is extremely popular. It solves many challenges - including the upcoming, manufactured crisis occasioned by the simple need to rebalance. If Democrats are smart, they will make this an issue in 2016 and smoke out their Republican opponents. Since the Trustees Report tells us that Social Security legislation must pass before 2016, Democrats should force Republicans to choose. Republicans in Congress can join with Democrats, backed by the majority of Americans, including their own base, in expanding Social Security. Or Republicans can seek to use their majority in Congress to enact the ideologically-driven, irresponsible and unpopular effort to undermine this bedrock of working families' economic security.

Social Security is a solution to our looming retirement income crisis, the increasing economic squeeze on middle class families, and the perilous and growing income and wealth inequality. In light of these challenges and Social Security's important role in addressing them, the right question is not how can we afford to expand Social Security, but, rather, how can we afford not to expand it.

The Social Security Board of Trustees has just released its annual report to Congress. The most important takeaways are that Social Security has a large and growing surplus, and its future cost is fully affordable.

It is sometimes reported that Social Security's current costs exceed its revenue, but if that happened, we wouldn't need a report to tell us. The whole country would know, because 59 million beneficiaries would not get their earned benefits as they now do every month. By law, Social Security can only pay benefits if it has sufficient revenue to cover every penny of costs - administrative as well as benefit costs. The claim that Social Security is running a deficit counts only Social Security's income from its premiums, often called payroll contributions or taxes, and disregards one or both of its other two dedicated sources of income: investment income and dedicated income tax revenue. When income from all of Social Security's revenue sources is counted, Social Security ran a $25 billion surplus in 2014.

Social Security is projected to run a surplus again this year. And next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. These annual surpluses simply add to its large and growing accumulated surplus.

Over the next 5 years, Social Security has sufficient funds to pay every penny of benefits and every penny of associated administrative costs. That is true for the next 10 years. And also the next 15 years. Over the next 25 years, Social Security is projecting a modest shortfall of just .51 percent of GDP. Over the next 50 years, the projection is just 0.8 of GDP. And over the next 75 years, the shortfall is projected to be just 0.96 percent of GDP. Let's put those percentages in perspective. Military spending after the 9/11 terrorist attack increased 1.1 percent, of GDP. Spending on public education nationwide went up 2.8 percent of GDP between 1950 and 1975, when the baby boom generation showed up as school children.

The fact is that, as the richest nation in the world at the richest point in our history, not only can we afford the current levels of Social Security protections, we can afford to greatly expand Social Security. At its most expensive, in 2035 when all baby boomers are all over age 70, and indeed at the end of the 21st century, we are projected to spend considerably less, as a percentage of GDP, than Germany, France, Japan, Austria and most other industrialized countries spend on their counterpart programs today.

It is time to expand Social Security. Social Security's benefits are modest and don't cover a number of eventualities, such as parental leave and sick days, which the Social Security programs of other countries cover. It is time to bolster the economic security of America's working families.

Social Security is a solution. It is a solution to a looming retirement income crisis where most workers will be unable to retire without a drastic reduction in their standards of living. Social Security is the most universal, secure, and efficient source of retirement income that we have, providing a guaranteed, inflation-protected source of income that one will never outlive. And, expanding Social Security helps more than retirees. Because disability and survivor benefits are derived from the same benefit formula, increasing its benefits automatically improves the income of non-aged workers and their families. Adding new benefit protections, such as paid family leave and paid sick days would do even more.

Virtually all politicians have expressed concern about growing income and wealth inequality. Expanding Social Security and requiring millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share will begin to put brakes on this dangerously and rapidly growing upward redistribution of wealth.

Although today's Congress does not seem likely to expand Social Security benefits, the Democrats could force their hand. Though one single payment is deducted from paychecks for Social Security, its revenue is divided into two separate trusts. From time to time rebalancing is required. One would think that Social Security trustees have the authority to do this simple rebalancing themselves. But that is not how the law works. Instead, rebalancing requires an act of Congress.

The Trustees Report once again projects that Congress must act before the end of 2016 to rebalance Social Security's trust funds. If that is not done, Social Security's disability benefits will be cut by around 20 percent. Rebalancing should be routine and has been so in the past.

However, today's Republican leaders have already made clear, through a rule adopted on the very first day of the new Congress, that they plan to hold rebalancing hostage this time around. Presumably, they are seeking a bipartisan deal, worked out behind closed doors, that cuts Social Security and enacts other unpopular changes. Instead, the Democrats should hold firm for winning policy and politics. They should propose enactment of one of the many Democratic bills which expands Social Security.

For example, The Social Security Expansion Act, sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), expands benefits in important ways while ensuring that all benefits, including disability insurance benefits, can be paid through 2065. The Social Security 2100 Act, introduced by Representative John Larson (D-CT), expands benefits while ensuring that all benefits, including disability insurance benefits, can be paid through 2090. Indeed, 43 Senators and 116 House members are on record in favor of expansion, in conjunction with ensuring that the wealthiest among us at long last pay their fair share.

Expansion is excellent policy. It is extremely popular. It solves many challenges - including the upcoming, manufactured crisis occasioned by the simple need to rebalance. If Democrats are smart, they will make this an issue in 2016 and smoke out their Republican opponents. Since the Trustees Report tells us that Social Security legislation must pass before 2016, Democrats should force Republicans to choose. Republicans in Congress can join with Democrats, backed by the majority of Americans, including their own base, in expanding Social Security. Or Republicans can seek to use their majority in Congress to enact the ideologically-driven, irresponsible and unpopular effort to undermine this bedrock of working families' economic security.

Social Security is a solution to our looming retirement income crisis, the increasing economic squeeze on middle class families, and the perilous and growing income and wealth inequality. In light of these challenges and Social Security's important role in addressing them, the right question is not how can we afford to expand Social Security, but, rather, how can we afford not to expand it.

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-american-south-drives-low-wage-economyHow the American South Drives the Low-Wage Economyhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/102630032/0/alternet_labor~How-the-American-South-Drives-the-LowWage-Economy

The Southern labor system (with low pay and no unions) is wending its way north.

Santayana had it wrong: Even if we remember the past, we may be condemned to repeat it. Indeed, the more we learn about the conflict between the North and South that led to the Civil War, the more it becomes apparent that we are reliving that conflict today. The South’s current drive to impose on the rest of the nation its opposition to worker and minority rights—through the vehicle of a Southernized Republican Party—resembles nothing so much as the efforts of antebellum Southern political leaders to blunt the North’s opposition to the slave labor system. Correspondingly, in the recent actions of West Coast and Northeastern cities and states to raise labor standards and protect minority rights, there are echoes of the pre–Civil War frustrations that many Northerners felt at the failure of the federal government to defend and promote a free labor system, frustrations that—ironically—led them to found the Republican Party.

It’s the resilience of the Southern order and the similarities between the Old South and the New that are most surprising—at least, until we disenthrall ourselves from a sanitized understanding of that Old South. It’s taken nearly 100 years for the prevailing image of the pre–Civil War South to become less subject to the racist falsifications that long had shaped it. The malign fantasies of 1915’s The Birth of a Nation and the Golden Age hooey of 1939’s Gone with the Wind have given way to the grim realism of 12 Years A Slave. Through all its incarnations, however, the antebellum South has retained its status as a world apart from the rest of America, whether (as D.W. Griffith would have it) for its chivalry or (as the historical record shows) its savagery.

Southern exceptionalism has also extended to the views of the South’s place in—or more precisely, its purported absence from—the development of the modern American economy. The slavery-saddled South was often considered the quasi-feudal outlier in the early—and presumably Northern—development of 19th-century American capitalism. While finance and factories rose north of the Mason–Dixon Line and railroads spanned the Northern states, the South was an island—with just a sprinkling of banks and rails and virtually no factories at all—largely detached from industrial capitalism’s rise.

In just the past year, however, a spate of revisionist histories has made significant additions to the historical literature that persuasively dispels this image. To be sure, the South was short on factories, trains, and banks, but its brutally productive slave economy spurred the development of the first factories of the industrial age, the textile mills of Massachusetts and Manchester, England, and the railroads that moved their goods. It was also key to the creation of modern finance and such pioneering industrial financiers as the Baring Brothers in Britain and the Brown Brothers in New York. Empire of Cotton by Harvard University historian Sven Beckert, which won this year’s Bancroft Prize, and The Half Has Never Been Told by Cornell University historian Edward Baptist, which won this year’s Hillman Prize, both document how the industrial and financial capitalism of the 19th century arose as a direct result of the conquests, expulsions (of Native Americans), and enslavements that turned the Deep South into a vast slave-labor camp that generated unprecedented profits for manufacturers and bankers who lived hundreds or thousands of miles from the Mississippi Delta.

The American South before the Civil War was the low-wage—actually, the no-wage—anchor of the first global production chain.

Today, as the auto and aerospace manufacturers of Europe and East Asia open low-wage assembly plants in Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, and Mississippi, the South has assumed a comparable role once more. Indeed, the South today shares more features with its antebellum ancestor than it has in a very long time. Now as then, white Southern elites and their powerful allies among non-Southern business interests seek to expand to the rest of the nation the South’s subjugation of workers and its suppression of the voting rights of those who might oppose their policies. In fact, now more than then, the South’s efforts to spread its values across America are advancing, as Northern Republicans adopt their Southern counterparts’ antipathy to unions and support for voter suppression, and as workers’ earnings in the North fall toward Southern levels. And now as then, a sectional backlash against Southern norms has emerged that, when combined with the Southern surge, is again creating two nations within one.

IN THE SPRING OF 2011, the Boston Consulting Group made a bold prediction: Manufacturing, which had been fleeing American shores for years, particularly to China, was going to come back. “China’s rising manufacturing costs will significantly erode [the] savings” that U.S. companies had realized by having their products assembled there, three of the firm’s partners wrote in a widely publicized study. The advantages of offshoring would wane, and American manufacturing would rise again.

The numbers that the authors adduced certainly made their claim seem plausible. As their wages continued to increase, Chinese factory workers, whose pay, adjusted for the productivity differences between China and the United States, came to just 23 percent of their American counterparts’ in 2000, had already seen that figure grow to 31 percent in 2010, and it would likely increase to 44 percent in 2015. More revealing still, however, was the authors’ comparison between factory workers in one particular region of China and one particular region of the U.S. In 2000, they showed, factory workers in and around Shanghai already made 36 percent of the productivity-adjusted pay of workers in Mississippi—a figure that rose to 48 percent in 2010 and that they projected to grow to 69 percent in 2015.

By contrast to the more rigid European economies, with their safeguards of workers’ rights, America’s was perfectly positioned to take advantage of China’s growing labor costs. “America is so robust and so flexible compared to all economies but China,” said Harold Sirkin, BCG senior partner and the study’s primary author, when I interviewed him at the time of his study’s release. “Getting the work rules right, getting the wage scales right—the [U.S.] economy can flex in ways that people wouldn’t believe!”

The study’s readers might be forgiven, though, if their reaction to its revelations was less effusive than the study’s authors. The basis for their comparison was Mississippi? The key to an American manufacturing renaissance was, as the study put it, “an increasingly flexible workforce”? “Flexible” has a distinct economic meaning: being paid less than what had been the standard for American manufacturing workers. It had a distinct geographic meaning, too: Southern.

“We made a mistake by picking Mississippi,” Sirkin admitted when I suggested that most Americans’ view of a rosy national future probably didn’t include having wage levels reduced to those of the country’s poorest state. Indeed, when BCG produced a fuller version of its study a few months later, all mention of Mississippi had vanished. But BCG’s focus merely crossed some state lines. “When all costs are taken into account,” the authors wrote, “certain U.S. states, such as South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee, will turn out to be among the least expensive production sites in the industrialized world.”

It’s been four years since BCG made its predictions, and they’ve proved lamentably accurate. The American economy has “flexed” just as the study’s authors said it would: Manufacturing has continued to move to the South, and factory workers’ wages have gone south as well. Between 1980 and 2013, The Wall Street Journal has reported, the number of auto industry jobs in the Midwest fell by 33 percent, while those in the South increased by 52 percent. Alabama saw a rise in manufacturing jobs of 196 percent, South Carolina of 121 percent, and Tennessee of 103 percent; while Ohio saw a decline of 36 percent, Wisconsin of 43 percent, and Michigan of 49 percent.

Even as auto factories were opening all across the South, however, autoworkers’ earnings were falling. From 2001 to 2013, workers at auto-parts plants in Alabama—the state with the highest growth rate—saw their earnings decline by 24 percent, and those in Mississippi by 13.6 percent. The newer the hire, the bleaker the picture, even though by 2013 the industry was recovering, and in the South, booming. New hires’ pay was 24 percent lower than all auto-parts workers in South Carolina and 17 percent lower in Alabama.

One reason wages continued to fall throughout the Deep South, despite the influx of jobs, is the region’s distinctive absence of legislation and institutions that protect workers’ interests. The five states that have no minimum-wage laws are Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Georgia is one of the two states (the other is Wyoming) that have set minimum wages below the level of the federal standard. (In all these states, of course, employers are required to pay the federal minimum wage.) Likewise, the rates of unionization of Southern states’ workforces are among the lowest in the land: 4.3 percent in Georgia, 3.7 percent in Mississippi, 2.2 percent in South Carolina, 1.9 percent in North Carolina. The extensive use of workers employed by temporary staffing agencies in Southern factories—one former Nissan official has said such workers constitute more than half the workers in Nissan’s Southern plants—has lowered workers’ incomes even more, and created one more obstacle to unionization.

The South’s aversion to both minimum-wage standards and unions is rooted deep within the DNA of white Southern elites, whose primary impulse has always been to keep African Americans down. To those elites, the prospect of biracial unions threatened not just their profits but the legitimacy of their social order. To counter the biracial Southern populist movement that emerged in the 1890s, those elites created Jim Crow laws that legitimated and promoted white racism, and it was largely by manipulating that racism that they were able to thwart almost all the Southern organizing campaigns that unions have waged since the 1930s.

Ironically, most of the largest factories that have arisen in the South in recent years belong to European and Asian firms that, in their home countries, pay high wages and are entirely and harmoniously unionized. In going to the South, however, they go native, paying wages and providing benefits well beneath those that such firms as General Motors and Ford offer their employees, and blocking workers’ attempts to unionize. (The one exception to this rule is Volkswagen, whose corporate board—controlled by worker representatives and public officials—has not opposed the unionization of its Chattanooga plant. In that city, state and local public officials have led anti-union campaigns.) Nissan has plants in Tennessee and Mississippi; Mercedes has one in Alabama and will open one next year in South Carolina; BMW has one in South Carolina, where Volvo recently decided to build a new plant; Airbus plans to open one in Alabama. They come to sell to the American market and they come because the labor is cheap.

“Airbus is a global manufacturer,” Jürgen Bühl, who heads the treasurer’s office of IG Metall, the German metal-workers union, and is the primary staffer for the union’s representative on Airbus’s board of directors, told me in April. “When we go abroad, we have the high-value work, the research and development, done in Germany. We [workers in German factories] supply the high-value parts. The workers who assemble the parts in the Airbus factory in Tianjin, China, produce 3 to 5 percent of the total value. But given the 6-to-1 productivity advantage that the United States has over China, it’s cheaper to do the final assembly in the U.S.” And a lot cheaper than in high-value-added Germany, where the average hourly compensation for manufacturing workers in 2011 (the last time the Bureau of Labor Statistics performed an international comparison) was a third higher than their U.S. counterparts’ ($47.38 there; $35.53 here).

For global manufacturers, the United States—more precisely, the American South—has become the low-wage alternative to China. For American manufacturers, too: In 2012, General Electric re-shored its production of refrigerators and water heaters from Mexico and China to its Appliance Park factories in Kentucky, nearly doubling the park’s workforce in the process. Unlike the vast majority of Southern factories, Appliance Park was unionized, but in recent years, the union there was compelled to agree to a two-tier contract, in which the lower tier of workers (70 percent of them) make far less than the more senior workers: Their starting hourly pay is just over $13.50, almost $8 less than what new workers at Appliance Park used to receive.

In the 21st century, the American South has become the low-wage anchor of a global production process—just as it was before the Civil War.

THE SLAVE ECONOMY OF the South dominated the antebellum American—and indeed, much of the European—economy. The Industrial Revolution, which first emerged in the cotton mills of Manchester, depended almost entirely on the product of the slave South. Indeed, the two economies—industrial and slave—rose in tandem. The invention of the cotton gin in this nation and the creation of water- and then steam-powered mills in the English Midlands provided the technological wherewithal for the breakthrough, but no less important were the forced exile of Native Americans from the lands that were to become Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi; the sale and forced migration of more than 800,000 slaves from the Mid-Atlantic states to the cotton states; and the routine use of physical abuse to compel those slaves to become steadily more productive in their planting and picking of cotton. Even as more land was uprooted to make way for expanding cotton fields, Baptist shows that the productivity of the pickers—that is, the number of pounds they individually harvested—more than doubled between 1830 and 1860. Given the complete absence of any technological progress in cotton-picking during this time, and the statements of numerous former slaves testifying to the increased brutality of their overseers during this period to compel them to work faster, Baptist concludes that this was a productivity revolution driven by torture.

Between 1790 and 1860, America’s yearly production of cotton grew from 1.5 million pounds to more than 2.2 billion pounds, from less than 1 percent of the world’s cotton production to two-thirds of all the cotton produced. The lion’s share of that crop was shipped to Britain. By the eve of the Civil War, cotton constituted 61 percent of all U.S. exports, and the U.S. was producing 88 percent of all the cotton that Britain imported. As cotton production expanded, so did the mills; by 1830, one out of six British employees worked in cotton factories.

The non-Southern supporters of the Southern slave economy included not only industrialists, but also many of the leading bankers in the U.S. and the U.K. Since harvests are seasonal, farmers invariably need credit, for which they need to put up collateral. The collateral that Southern cotton growers put up was most commonly their slaves: 88 percent of the loans to growers in Louisiana and 82 percent in South Carolina, Beckert shows, were secured by their enslaved workers. When growers couldn’t meet their obligations, as thousands could not after the financial panic of 1837, banks ended up owning slaves and even entire plantations. Brown Brothers, on its way to becoming one of Wall Street’s leading investment banks, owned 13 plantations and many hundreds of slaves after the 1837 collapse. Major banks, such as Baring Brothers, even securitized slaves, much as banks in our time securitize home mortgages: They sold bonds to investors based on bundles of loans that slaveholders had taken out. Whenever the economy went bad, or the price of cotton dropped, owners would sell their slaves, irrevocably sundering thousands of African American families.

The Southern slave economy was simply too big and profitable for Northern and British banks to shun. In 1831 and 1832, even the Bank of the United States—the Philadelphia-based national bank that epitomized Northeastern elites, and which, largely for that reason, Andrew Jackson later abolished—made loans so large to a single firm whose sole business was slave trading that they constituted 5 percent of all the bank’s credit during those years. The ties between Northern bankers and Southern slavers were so strong that as the South seceded in 1860 and 1861, New York Mayor Fernando Wood urged his city—then as now the center of American finance—to secede as well. New York’s British counterpart was Liverpool, the port city to which Southern cotton was shipped en route to Manchester. Liverpudlian bankers were major investors in the slave economy, and during the Civil War they not only extended credit to the Confederacy, but also funded the manufacture of arms bound for the South and the construction of Confederate warships.

The conflict between the North and the South in the decades before the Civil War centered on the question of whose labor system would prevail. The steady expansion of the United States westward provided a frequent flashpoint, posing the question of whether new states would be free or slave. The prospective admission of Missouri, in 1819 and 1820, provoked the first such sectional battle. Though the abolitionist movement was in its infancy, Southern leaders such as South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun were ever wary that the admission of new non-slave states would bring more anti-slavery senators and representatives to Congress, eventually threatening slavery’s continued existence. Until the outbreak of the Civil War, however, the South retained enough congressional, executive, and judicial support to eliminate the line dividing future slave states from free states in the Western territories, and to criminalize assistance to escaped slaves in the Northern states. While the political power of the South didn’t significantly affect the earnings of Northern workers and farmers, the persistent growth of that power and the threat it ultimately posed to the Northern economy—and to the North’s increasingly democratic values—led to the formation of a distinctly Northern Republican Party and, in time, to civil war.

Today, by other means, that conflict continues.

THERE'S NOTHING NEW ABOUT Northern manufacturers moving south to lower their labor costs. Textile factories, which had been located chiefly in New England, began to pop up in the South as early as the 1880s. In 1922, the average hourly wage in Massachusetts mills was 41 cents while in Alabama, it was 21 cents. Over the next six years, 40 percent of the Massachusetts factories shuttered their gates, and by the mid-1960s, the Southern textile industry was out-producing its Northern counterpart by a 24-to-1 margin.

But the shift of higher-value manufacturing to the South since the 1960s, once the South was air-conditioned and its Jim Crow laws nullified, has had a more profound effect on the American economy. Workers at the unionized auto, steel, aerospace, and other durable-goods factories in the Northern and Western states during the three decades following World War II attained a standard of living and of employment stability all but unknown to earlier generations of workers. Since the 1970s, however, that standard—and with it, the American middle class—has been eroded by the emergence of lower-wage competition from both the Global South and the domestic South.

Confronted not only with the financial collapse of 2008 and the ensuing Great Recession, but also with the double whammy of the two Souths, the median wage of all U.S. manufacturing workers fell by 4.4 percent between 2003 and 2013. Facing the possible collapse of the unionized auto industry, the United Auto Workers was compelled to institute two-tier contracts, bringing their less-senior members’ pay down to the levels that workers in the non-union Southern plants make. Newer hires at General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler are paid roughly half ($14 to $19 an hour) of what more senior workers make, and can’t make more no matter how long they work there. (Now that the industry has recovered, removing that ceiling from those workers’ pay has become, not surprisingly, a UAW priority.)

The decline of Northern wages to Southern levels hasn’t been confined to manufacturing. The expansion of Walmart from its Southern base into the North and West has had a profound effect on the incomes of retail workers and of workers all along its supply chain. Ferociously anti-union (when butchers at one Texas Walmart sought to unionize, company executives responded by eliminating the meat departments from every store in Texas and six neighboring states), Walmart directs its managers to keep payroll expenses between 5.5 percent and 8 percent of sales, though the norm in retail marketing is between 8 percent and 12 percent. Wages in counties where a Walmart has been operating for eight years, economist David Neumark has found, are 2.5 percent to 4.8 percent lower than those in comparable counties with no Walmart outlets.

But Walmart—America’s largest private-sector employer, with 1.4 million U.S. employees—is in lots of counties. In tandem with Southern manufacturers and with the spread of Southern economic norms, it has brought Northern wages closer to Southern levels. In 2008, the wage gap between states of the industrial Midwest and those of the South—for all workers, not just those in manufacturing—was nearly $7, according to Moody’s Analytics. By the end of 2011, it had fallen to $3.34.

THE SPREAD OF SOUTHERN earning levels northward has been accompanied and abetted by the concomitant spread of Southern values. Just as Northern bankers and textile mill owners such as Massachusetts’s Abbott Lawrence profited from and supported the antebellum South, today’s business and financial leaders from all parts of the nation profit from the low-wage production of the global and domestic souths, and support the suppression of unions in the North as well as the South. What’s new is the spread of historically white Southern values to Northern Republican politicians—the latest development in the 50-year Southernization (and nearly complete racial whitening) of the Republican Party.

In the last three years, the Republican governors and legislatures of such onetime union bastions as Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin have joined the South in enacting “right to work” laws intended to reduce union membership. Since these laws cover only private-sector unions, and thus have no effect on the labor costs of government employees, the Republicans’ initial motivation was almost entirely political: Diminishing unions weakened institutions that generally campaigned for Democrats. But in recent months, bills to lower wages for construction workers on public projects have been moving through the legislatures in those three states, and the Michigan legislature has passed a bill forbidding cities from setting their own minimum-wage standards—all measures designed to hit workers’ pocketbooks. Moreover, laws designed to depress minority, millennial, and Democratic voting by requiring voters to present particular kinds of photo identification have been enacted not only by eight of the eleven once-Confederate states, but by Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin as well. Like the pre-1861 slaveholding elites, today’s Republicans appear increasingly dedicated to Southernizing the North.

White racism is the great hardy perennial of American life and politics, and it has never been confined to the South. But never before have Northern-state governments (all of them Republican) sought so successfully to emulate policies of racial suppression and anti-working-class economics that the South originated. Four decades of declining economic prospects, overlapping with a demographic revolution that has transformed a predominantly white nation into a profoundly multiracial one, has heightened racist anxieties among many within both the Northern and Southern white working classes—anxieties that Republicans, both Northern and Southern, have skillfully exploited. And as globalization weakened the power of unions in the once-industrial Midwest, Republicans in those states who long had wished to make unions as inconsequential as they are in the South had a golden opportunity—and took it.

With divided government at the federal level blocking such measures as a minimum-wage hike, and with Southern congressional resistance to strengthening workers’ rights blocking labor-law reform even when Democrats have controlled Congress, the federal government in recent decades has done little to obstruct the nationalization of the white South’s racist and anti-worker norms. Since 2013, however, at the very same time that Northern Republicans have moved right, states and cities where multiracial liberal coalitions govern have taken it upon themselves to enact their own minimum-wage increases, paid sick-day legislation, and statutes making it easier to vote. But there are too few such states to offset the malign influence of the South on broader wage trends.

Barack Obama came to national prominence in 2004 hoping to bridge the divisions between blue states and red. Instead, these gulfs have deepened. Federal remedy is stymied; the public policies of the red and blue states are racing apart; and the fundamental divisions that turned one nation into two in 1861 loom larger today than they have in a very long time.

The Southern labor system (with low pay and no unions) is wending its way north.

Santayana had it wrong: Even if we remember the past, we may be condemned to repeat it. Indeed, the more we learn about the conflict between the North and South that led to the Civil War, the more it becomes apparent that we are reliving that conflict today. The South’s current drive to impose on the rest of the nation its opposition to worker and minority rights—through the vehicle of a Southernized Republican Party—resembles nothing so much as the efforts of antebellum Southern political leaders to blunt the North’s opposition to the slave labor system. Correspondingly, in the recent actions of West Coast and Northeastern cities and states to raise labor standards and protect minority rights, there are echoes of the pre–Civil War frustrations that many Northerners felt at the failure of the federal government to defend and promote a free labor system, frustrations that—ironically—led them to found the Republican Party.

It’s the resilience of the Southern order and the similarities between the Old South and the New that are most surprising—at least, until we disenthrall ourselves from a sanitized understanding of that Old South. It’s taken nearly 100 years for the prevailing image of the pre–Civil War South to become less subject to the racist falsifications that long had shaped it. The malign fantasies of 1915’s The Birth of a Nation and the Golden Age hooey of 1939’s Gone with the Wind have given way to the grim realism of 12 Years A Slave. Through all its incarnations, however, the antebellum South has retained its status as a world apart from the rest of America, whether (as D.W. Griffith would have it) for its chivalry or (as the historical record shows) its savagery.

Southern exceptionalism has also extended to the views of the South’s place in—or more precisely, its purported absence from—the development of the modern American economy. The slavery-saddled South was often considered the quasi-feudal outlier in the early—and presumably Northern—development of 19th-century American capitalism. While finance and factories rose north of the Mason–Dixon Line and railroads spanned the Northern states, the South was an island—with just a sprinkling of banks and rails and virtually no factories at all—largely detached from industrial capitalism’s rise.

In just the past year, however, a spate of revisionist histories has made significant additions to the historical literature that persuasively dispels this image. To be sure, the South was short on factories, trains, and banks, but its brutally productive slave economy spurred the development of the first factories of the industrial age, the textile mills of Massachusetts and Manchester, England, and the railroads that moved their goods. It was also key to the creation of modern finance and such pioneering industrial financiers as the Baring Brothers in Britain and the Brown Brothers in New York. Empire of Cotton by Harvard University historian Sven Beckert, which won this year’s Bancroft Prize, and The Half Has Never Been Told by Cornell University historian Edward Baptist, which won this year’s Hillman Prize, both document how the industrial and financial capitalism of the 19th century arose as a direct result of the conquests, expulsions (of Native Americans), and enslavements that turned the Deep South into a vast slave-labor camp that generated unprecedented profits for manufacturers and bankers who lived hundreds or thousands of miles from the Mississippi Delta.

The American South before the Civil War was the low-wage—actually, the no-wage—anchor of the first global production chain.

Today, as the auto and aerospace manufacturers of Europe and East Asia open low-wage assembly plants in Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, and Mississippi, the South has assumed a comparable role once more. Indeed, the South today shares more features with its antebellum ancestor than it has in a very long time. Now as then, white Southern elites and their powerful allies among non-Southern business interests seek to expand to the rest of the nation the South’s subjugation of workers and its suppression of the voting rights of those who might oppose their policies. In fact, now more than then, the South’s efforts to spread its values across America are advancing, as Northern Republicans adopt their Southern counterparts’ antipathy to unions and support for voter suppression, and as workers’ earnings in the North fall toward Southern levels. And now as then, a sectional backlash against Southern norms has emerged that, when combined with the Southern surge, is again creating two nations within one.

IN THE SPRING OF 2011, the Boston Consulting Group made a bold prediction: Manufacturing, which had been fleeing American shores for years, particularly to China, was going to come back. “China’s rising manufacturing costs will significantly erode [the] savings” that U.S. companies had realized by having their products assembled there, three of the firm’s partners wrote in a widely publicized study. The advantages of offshoring would wane, and American manufacturing would rise again.

The numbers that the authors adduced certainly made their claim seem plausible. As their wages continued to increase, Chinese factory workers, whose pay, adjusted for the productivity differences between China and the United States, came to just 23 percent of their American counterparts’ in 2000, had already seen that figure grow to 31 percent in 2010, and it would likely increase to 44 percent in 2015. More revealing still, however, was the authors’ comparison between factory workers in one particular region of China and one particular region of the U.S. In 2000, they showed, factory workers in and around Shanghai already made 36 percent of the productivity-adjusted pay of workers in Mississippi—a figure that rose to 48 percent in 2010 and that they projected to grow to 69 percent in 2015.

By contrast to the more rigid European economies, with their safeguards of workers’ rights, America’s was perfectly positioned to take advantage of China’s growing labor costs. “America is so robust and so flexible compared to all economies but China,” said Harold Sirkin, BCG senior partner and the study’s primary author, when I interviewed him at the time of his study’s release. “Getting the work rules right, getting the wage scales right—the [U.S.] economy can flex in ways that people wouldn’t believe!”

The study’s readers might be forgiven, though, if their reaction to its revelations was less effusive than the study’s authors. The basis for their comparison was Mississippi? The key to an American manufacturing renaissance was, as the study put it, “an increasingly flexible workforce”? “Flexible” has a distinct economic meaning: being paid less than what had been the standard for American manufacturing workers. It had a distinct geographic meaning, too: Southern.

“We made a mistake by picking Mississippi,” Sirkin admitted when I suggested that most Americans’ view of a rosy national future probably didn’t include having wage levels reduced to those of the country’s poorest state. Indeed, when BCG produced a fuller version of its study a few months later, all mention of Mississippi had vanished. But BCG’s focus merely crossed some state lines. “When all costs are taken into account,” the authors wrote, “certain U.S. states, such as South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee, will turn out to be among the least expensive production sites in the industrialized world.”

It’s been four years since BCG made its predictions, and they’ve proved lamentably accurate. The American economy has “flexed” just as the study’s authors said it would: Manufacturing has continued to move to the South, and factory workers’ wages have gone south as well. Between 1980 and 2013, The Wall Street Journal has reported, the number of auto industry jobs in the Midwest fell by 33 percent, while those in the South increased by 52 percent. Alabama saw a rise in manufacturing jobs of 196 percent, South Carolina of 121 percent, and Tennessee of 103 percent; while Ohio saw a decline of 36 percent, Wisconsin of 43 percent, and Michigan of 49 percent.

Even as auto factories were opening all across the South, however, autoworkers’ earnings were falling. From 2001 to 2013, workers at auto-parts plants in Alabama—the state with the highest growth rate—saw their earnings decline by 24 percent, and those in Mississippi by 13.6 percent. The newer the hire, the bleaker the picture, even though by 2013 the industry was recovering, and in the South, booming. New hires’ pay was 24 percent lower than all auto-parts workers in South Carolina and 17 percent lower in Alabama.

One reason wages continued to fall throughout the Deep South, despite the influx of jobs, is the region’s distinctive absence of legislation and institutions that protect workers’ interests. The five states that have no minimum-wage laws are Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Georgia is one of the two states (the other is Wyoming) that have set minimum wages below the level of the federal standard. (In all these states, of course, employers are required to pay the federal minimum wage.) Likewise, the rates of unionization of Southern states’ workforces are among the lowest in the land: 4.3 percent in Georgia, 3.7 percent in Mississippi, 2.2 percent in South Carolina, 1.9 percent in North Carolina. The extensive use of workers employed by temporary staffing agencies in Southern factories—one former Nissan official has said such workers constitute more than half the workers in Nissan’s Southern plants—has lowered workers’ incomes even more, and created one more obstacle to unionization.

The South’s aversion to both minimum-wage standards and unions is rooted deep within the DNA of white Southern elites, whose primary impulse has always been to keep African Americans down. To those elites, the prospect of biracial unions threatened not just their profits but the legitimacy of their social order. To counter the biracial Southern populist movement that emerged in the 1890s, those elites created Jim Crow laws that legitimated and promoted white racism, and it was largely by manipulating that racism that they were able to thwart almost all the Southern organizing campaigns that unions have waged since the 1930s.

Ironically, most of the largest factories that have arisen in the South in recent years belong to European and Asian firms that, in their home countries, pay high wages and are entirely and harmoniously unionized. In going to the South, however, they go native, paying wages and providing benefits well beneath those that such firms as General Motors and Ford offer their employees, and blocking workers’ attempts to unionize. (The one exception to this rule is Volkswagen, whose corporate board—controlled by worker representatives and public officials—has not opposed the unionization of its Chattanooga plant. In that city, state and local public officials have led anti-union campaigns.) Nissan has plants in Tennessee and Mississippi; Mercedes has one in Alabama and will open one next year in South Carolina; BMW has one in South Carolina, where Volvo recently decided to build a new plant; Airbus plans to open one in Alabama. They come to sell to the American market and they come because the labor is cheap.

“Airbus is a global manufacturer,” Jürgen Bühl, who heads the treasurer’s office of IG Metall, the German metal-workers union, and is the primary staffer for the union’s representative on Airbus’s board of directors, told me in April. “When we go abroad, we have the high-value work, the research and development, done in Germany. We [workers in German factories] supply the high-value parts. The workers who assemble the parts in the Airbus factory in Tianjin, China, produce 3 to 5 percent of the total value. But given the 6-to-1 productivity advantage that the United States has over China, it’s cheaper to do the final assembly in the U.S.” And a lot cheaper than in high-value-added Germany, where the average hourly compensation for manufacturing workers in 2011 (the last time the Bureau of Labor Statistics performed an international comparison) was a third higher than their U.S. counterparts’ ($47.38 there; $35.53 here).

For global manufacturers, the United States—more precisely, the American South—has become the low-wage alternative to China. For American manufacturers, too: In 2012, General Electric re-shored its production of refrigerators and water heaters from Mexico and China to its Appliance Park factories in Kentucky, nearly doubling the park’s workforce in the process. Unlike the vast majority of Southern factories, Appliance Park was unionized, but in recent years, the union there was compelled to agree to a two-tier contract, in which the lower tier of workers (70 percent of them) make far less than the more senior workers: Their starting hourly pay is just over $13.50, almost $8 less than what new workers at Appliance Park used to receive.

In the 21st century, the American South has become the low-wage anchor of a global production process—just as it was before the Civil War.

THE SLAVE ECONOMY OF the South dominated the antebellum American—and indeed, much of the European—economy. The Industrial Revolution, which first emerged in the cotton mills of Manchester, depended almost entirely on the product of the slave South. Indeed, the two economies—industrial and slave—rose in tandem. The invention of the cotton gin in this nation and the creation of water- and then steam-powered mills in the English Midlands provided the technological wherewithal for the breakthrough, but no less important were the forced exile of Native Americans from the lands that were to become Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi; the sale and forced migration of more than 800,000 slaves from the Mid-Atlantic states to the cotton states; and the routine use of physical abuse to compel those slaves to become steadily more productive in their planting and picking of cotton. Even as more land was uprooted to make way for expanding cotton fields, Baptist shows that the productivity of the pickers—that is, the number of pounds they individually harvested—more than doubled between 1830 and 1860. Given the complete absence of any technological progress in cotton-picking during this time, and the statements of numerous former slaves testifying to the increased brutality of their overseers during this period to compel them to work faster, Baptist concludes that this was a productivity revolution driven by torture.

Between 1790 and 1860, America’s yearly production of cotton grew from 1.5 million pounds to more than 2.2 billion pounds, from less than 1 percent of the world’s cotton production to two-thirds of all the cotton produced. The lion’s share of that crop was shipped to Britain. By the eve of the Civil War, cotton constituted 61 percent of all U.S. exports, and the U.S. was producing 88 percent of all the cotton that Britain imported. As cotton production expanded, so did the mills; by 1830, one out of six British employees worked in cotton factories.

The non-Southern supporters of the Southern slave economy included not only industrialists, but also many of the leading bankers in the U.S. and the U.K. Since harvests are seasonal, farmers invariably need credit, for which they need to put up collateral. The collateral that Southern cotton growers put up was most commonly their slaves: 88 percent of the loans to growers in Louisiana and 82 percent in South Carolina, Beckert shows, were secured by their enslaved workers. When growers couldn’t meet their obligations, as thousands could not after the financial panic of 1837, banks ended up owning slaves and even entire plantations. Brown Brothers, on its way to becoming one of Wall Street’s leading investment banks, owned 13 plantations and many hundreds of slaves after the 1837 collapse. Major banks, such as Baring Brothers, even securitized slaves, much as banks in our time securitize home mortgages: They sold bonds to investors based on bundles of loans that slaveholders had taken out. Whenever the economy went bad, or the price of cotton dropped, owners would sell their slaves, irrevocably sundering thousands of African American families.

The Southern slave economy was simply too big and profitable for Northern and British banks to shun. In 1831 and 1832, even the Bank of the United States—the Philadelphia-based national bank that epitomized Northeastern elites, and which, largely for that reason, Andrew Jackson later abolished—made loans so large to a single firm whose sole business was slave trading that they constituted 5 percent of all the bank’s credit during those years. The ties between Northern bankers and Southern slavers were so strong that as the South seceded in 1860 and 1861, New York Mayor Fernando Wood urged his city—then as now the center of American finance—to secede as well. New York’s British counterpart was Liverpool, the port city to which Southern cotton was shipped en route to Manchester. Liverpudlian bankers were major investors in the slave economy, and during the Civil War they not only extended credit to the Confederacy, but also funded the manufacture of arms bound for the South and the construction of Confederate warships.

The conflict between the North and the South in the decades before the Civil War centered on the question of whose labor system would prevail. The steady expansion of the United States westward provided a frequent flashpoint, posing the question of whether new states would be free or slave. The prospective admission of Missouri, in 1819 and 1820, provoked the first such sectional battle. Though the abolitionist movement was in its infancy, Southern leaders such as South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun were ever wary that the admission of new non-slave states would bring more anti-slavery senators and representatives to Congress, eventually threatening slavery’s continued existence. Until the outbreak of the Civil War, however, the South retained enough congressional, executive, and judicial support to eliminate the line dividing future slave states from free states in the Western territories, and to criminalize assistance to escaped slaves in the Northern states. While the political power of the South didn’t significantly affect the earnings of Northern workers and farmers, the persistent growth of that power and the threat it ultimately posed to the Northern economy—and to the North’s increasingly democratic values—led to the formation of a distinctly Northern Republican Party and, in time, to civil war.

Today, by other means, that conflict continues.

THERE'S NOTHING NEW ABOUT Northern manufacturers moving south to lower their labor costs. Textile factories, which had been located chiefly in New England, began to pop up in the South as early as the 1880s. In 1922, the average hourly wage in Massachusetts mills was 41 cents while in Alabama, it was 21 cents. Over the next six years, 40 percent of the Massachusetts factories shuttered their gates, and by the mid-1960s, the Southern textile industry was out-producing its Northern counterpart by a 24-to-1 margin.

But the shift of higher-value manufacturing to the South since the 1960s, once the South was air-conditioned and its Jim Crow laws nullified, has had a more profound effect on the American economy. Workers at the unionized auto, steel, aerospace, and other durable-goods factories in the Northern and Western states during the three decades following World War II attained a standard of living and of employment stability all but unknown to earlier generations of workers. Since the 1970s, however, that standard—and with it, the American middle class—has been eroded by the emergence of lower-wage competition from both the Global South and the domestic South.

Confronted not only with the financial collapse of 2008 and the ensuing Great Recession, but also with the double whammy of the two Souths, the median wage of all U.S. manufacturing workers fell by 4.4 percent between 2003 and 2013. Facing the possible collapse of the unionized auto industry, the United Auto Workers was compelled to institute two-tier contracts, bringing their less-senior members’ pay down to the levels that workers in the non-union Southern plants make. Newer hires at General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler are paid roughly half ($14 to $19 an hour) of what more senior workers make, and can’t make more no matter how long they work there. (Now that the industry has recovered, removing that ceiling from those workers’ pay has become, not surprisingly, a UAW priority.)

The decline of Northern wages to Southern levels hasn’t been confined to manufacturing. The expansion of Walmart from its Southern base into the North and West has had a profound effect on the incomes of retail workers and of workers all along its supply chain. Ferociously anti-union (when butchers at one Texas Walmart sought to unionize, company executives responded by eliminating the meat departments from every store in Texas and six neighboring states), Walmart directs its managers to keep payroll expenses between 5.5 percent and 8 percent of sales, though the norm in retail marketing is between 8 percent and 12 percent. Wages in counties where a Walmart has been operating for eight years, economist David Neumark has found, are 2.5 percent to 4.8 percent lower than those in comparable counties with no Walmart outlets.

But Walmart—America’s largest private-sector employer, with 1.4 million U.S. employees—is in lots of counties. In tandem with Southern manufacturers and with the spread of Southern economic norms, it has brought Northern wages closer to Southern levels. In 2008, the wage gap between states of the industrial Midwest and those of the South—for all workers, not just those in manufacturing—was nearly $7, according to Moody’s Analytics. By the end of 2011, it had fallen to $3.34.

THE SPREAD OF SOUTHERN earning levels northward has been accompanied and abetted by the concomitant spread of Southern values. Just as Northern bankers and textile mill owners such as Massachusetts’s Abbott Lawrence profited from and supported the antebellum South, today’s business and financial leaders from all parts of the nation profit from the low-wage production of the global and domestic souths, and support the suppression of unions in the North as well as the South. What’s new is the spread of historically white Southern values to Northern Republican politicians—the latest development in the 50-year Southernization (and nearly complete racial whitening) of the Republican Party.

In the last three years, the Republican governors and legislatures of such onetime union bastions as Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin have joined the South in enacting “right to work” laws intended to reduce union membership. Since these laws cover only private-sector unions, and thus have no effect on the labor costs of government employees, the Republicans’ initial motivation was almost entirely political: Diminishing unions weakened institutions that generally campaigned for Democrats. But in recent months, bills to lower wages for construction workers on public projects have been moving through the legislatures in those three states, and the Michigan legislature has passed a bill forbidding cities from setting their own minimum-wage standards—all measures designed to hit workers’ pocketbooks. Moreover, laws designed to depress minority, millennial, and Democratic voting by requiring voters to present particular kinds of photo identification have been enacted not only by eight of the eleven once-Confederate states, but by Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin as well. Like the pre-1861 slaveholding elites, today’s Republicans appear increasingly dedicated to Southernizing the North.

White racism is the great hardy perennial of American life and politics, and it has never been confined to the South. But never before have Northern-state governments (all of them Republican) sought so successfully to emulate policies of racial suppression and anti-working-class economics that the South originated. Four decades of declining economic prospects, overlapping with a demographic revolution that has transformed a predominantly white nation into a profoundly multiracial one, has heightened racist anxieties among many within both the Northern and Southern white working classes—anxieties that Republicans, both Northern and Southern, have skillfully exploited. And as globalization weakened the power of unions in the once-industrial Midwest, Republicans in those states who long had wished to make unions as inconsequential as they are in the South had a golden opportunity—and took it.

With divided government at the federal level blocking such measures as a minimum-wage hike, and with Southern congressional resistance to strengthening workers’ rights blocking labor-law reform even when Democrats have controlled Congress, the federal government in recent decades has done little to obstruct the nationalization of the white South’s racist and anti-worker norms. Since 2013, however, at the very same time that Northern Republicans have moved right, states and cities where multiracial liberal coalitions govern have taken it upon themselves to enact their own minimum-wage increases, paid sick-day legislation, and statutes making it easier to vote. But there are too few such states to offset the malign influence of the South on broader wage trends.

Barack Obama came to national prominence in 2004 hoping to bridge the divisions between blue states and red. Instead, these gulfs have deepened. Federal remedy is stymied; the public policies of the red and blue states are racing apart; and the fundamental divisions that turned one nation into two in 1861 loom larger today than they have in a very long time.

Amidst President Obama’s celebratory summer--with Supreme Court victories on Obamacare and same-sex marriage, his bold stance on prison-sentencing reform, and Confederate flags widely furled and stored--a curious off-note soured his standing on one of the Democratic Party’s signature issues--old-age security.

As the once-a-decade White House Conference on Aging (WHCoA) got underway last week, progressive Democrats, from Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to House Members John Coyers and John Lewis, sent a letter to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue calling for what many would consider a no-brainer for this president, the expansion of Social Security, particularly on the program’s 80th birthday this year.

The letter’s 74 congressional signatories reminded Obama, “More than half (53 percent) of today's working Americans are not expected to have sufficient resources upon retirement to maintain their standard of living."

The goal of strengthening Social Security was only one of the prime liberal issues barely audible from the East Room stage at the July 13 conference. But there was an undercurrent of concern over the prominence of commercial interests on the day’s agenda. Liberal leaders on Social Security have expressed frustration at the president’s “neglect” of calls to increase benefits for the most vulnerable seniors, especially ethnic elders and women.

We pledged to fight conservative efforts to “privatize” the program for individuals’ Wall Street investment. But in proposing new rules to help workers increase their retirement savings, the president stopped short of supporting stronger benefits for those most in need.

Laudable Measures Announced, But…

Attendees and live-streaming viewers around the country were enthusiastic about several major proposed regulations. One promises to improve quality and safety requirements for the nation’s 15,000 nursing homes. Another proposal would enable very low-income and frail homebound elders and people with disabilities to use food stamps for Meals on Wheels. Key among several Medicare announcements, doctors will be paid starting in 2016, to counsel patients about their end-of-life care options--the same voluntary service that former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin derided six years ago as “death panels.”

But absent was any substantive discussion of hospice and palliative care. An additional new guidance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will reinforce that the agency’s equal-access rule applies to all HUD-subsidized housing, such as Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly, barring discrimination based on “actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or marital status.”

Yet, neither the president nor WHCoA speakers addressed the looming crisis in affordable housing for seniors. For instance, since the height of the Great Recession, the White House and Congress have ended any new Section 202 developments. Furthermore, funding is so small for Section 8 rental vouchers that waiting lists are literally years long, especially in urban areas like Detroit, Oakland orBoston, where elders are being displaced by gentrification, mortgage fraud or other factors.

Housing was only one prime issue left off the dais throughout the day. Because Congress did not fund this WHCoA, as it has in past decades, the current administration decided to hold a scaled-down event with a limited program. But the final agenda--not released until last week--surprised even seasoned observers.

A Third of Speakers Corporate

Mark Miller, retirement columnist for Reuters and Money.com, commented in an e-mail for this article, “I've been surprised, and a little disturbed, to see that the WHCoA was so commercial. My in-box has been flooded all week with story pitches from corporations that participated in some way, who want to use that to their own benefit.

” Monday’s conference had presentations on caregiving, financial security, healthy aging, elder justice (elder abuse prevention) and technology. In fact, three of the day’s 10 talks were focused on tech, emphasizing innovative entrepreneurship. The conference, with 45 speakers plus the president, included 14 corporate speakers from such entities as Airbnb, Uber, Walgreen’s and the American Bankers’ Association. There were also 14 administration personnel. The remaining one-third of speakers ranged from one union representative, a couple of academic experts, and family caregivers, among them television and Broadway star, David Hyde Pierce. Pierce, whose family has dealt with Alzheimer’s disease, proved an adept moderator of the panel on caregiving.

At one point, panel member Ai-jen Poo, of Caring Across Generations, noted that the poorly supported 50 million caregivers in the United States will double by 2050 with the aging of the boomer generation. Not only do those families face looming shortages of geriatric health care professionals, the 2 million direct-care workers now earn merely $13,000 a year on average. In a telling moment, Pierce looked up at numerous audience members with tee shirts advocating a $15 minimum wage for those care workers and quipped, "I keep hoping capitalism will catch up with the need."

It was a sentiment that would echo throughout the day’s program. Giving a stirring presentation was UCLA gerontologist Fernando Torres-Gil, who presided over President Clinton’s 1995 WHCoA as that administration’s Assistant Secretary of Aging. He said, “As our society is becoming more ethnically diverse, the challenge will be to break down the walls of age and diversity.”

The percentage of ethnic Americans 65-plus will double by 2050 to more than four in 10. Research by the MacArthur Foundation and others has exposed inequality in American longevity. Findings show that black males with low educational levels live an average of 14 years less than college-educated white men. And the life-expectancy gap between white women with high and low levels of learning is 10 years. Yet longevity inequality and the intergenerational need for greater educational investment were left off Monday’s WHCoA platform.

Public-Private Partnerships

In addition to announcing a range of federal initiatives, the White House unveiled a series of public-private partnerships. A WHCoA Fact Sheet lists about 30 companies involved in joint projects with government agencies or nonprofits. Speaking on the conference financial-security panel, Bank of America’s Andy Sieg, head of Global Wealth and Retirement Solutions, announced the introduction of the bank’s Merrill Lynch Longevity Training Program for human resources and benefit plan professionals, developed in partnership with the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.

Merrill Lynch will instruct its bankers to provide retirement and benefit plan services to 35,000 companies and more than 5 million employees. Worthy as this program may be, the inclusion of BofA on such a limited program seemed a questionable choice, at least from a White House public relations perspective. Only last fall the Justice Department announced a nearly $17 billion settlement with the corporation over massive mortgage fraud. As recently as this May, the New York Times reported difficulties with the bank’s program under the settlement to meet consumer loan relief provisions.

Another question mark on the WHCoA program was why it devoted the only segment on the vital issue of universal design to a single high-tech company, IDEO, spotlighting the design firm’s launch of its Powerful Now: Positive Aging for All program.

Lacking in the conversation was any mention of such vital concerns as inexpensive, safe and appealing home modification beyond ugly grab bars, with public assistance for older homeowners on fixed incomes; efforts to persuade home builders to design accessible homes from the start; or product design to prevent home injuries, such as fall-prevention work done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Do ‘With, Not For’ Elders

IDEO did present a delightful surprise, staff designer Barbara Beskind, age 91. Accomplishing good design for elders, she said, is doing so “with, not for” older people.

In an awkward moment toward the end of the conference, Kathy Greenlee, who heads the U.S. Administration on Aging, recognized several prominent invitees to ask questions. Wilson Wewa of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs of Oregon, who said he was one of two tribal members in the room. He first called for research at the 566 tribes across Indian Country on elder abuse, “the elephant nobody wants to see.” Wiwa then stated, “Technology is great. I come from a rural area with little towns like Fossil, Ore., that nobody knows about that have 25 people in them. We have reservations that have no electricity. And therefore we don’t have technology. So we have to solve getting computers, technology to rural areas, not only in Indian America, but also through the rest of rural America.”

Greenlee very respectfully interrupted him because time was so short for audience input. Wiwa concluded, “Yes, I just want to say I--I’m asking for help for those areas, and we need to be cognizant that we’re all in this together.”

Amidst President Obama’s celebratory summer--with Supreme Court victories on Obamacare and same-sex marriage, his bold stance on prison-sentencing reform, and Confederate flags widely furled and stored--a curious off-note soured his standing on one of the Democratic Party’s signature issues--old-age security.

As the once-a-decade White House Conference on Aging (WHCoA) got underway last week, progressive Democrats, from Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to House Members John Coyers and John Lewis, sent a letter to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue calling for what many would consider a no-brainer for this president, the expansion of Social Security, particularly on the program’s 80th birthday this year.

The letter’s 74 congressional signatories reminded Obama, “More than half (53 percent) of today's working Americans are not expected to have sufficient resources upon retirement to maintain their standard of living."

The goal of strengthening Social Security was only one of the prime liberal issues barely audible from the East Room stage at the July 13 conference. But there was an undercurrent of concern over the prominence of commercial interests on the day’s agenda. Liberal leaders on Social Security have expressed frustration at the president’s “neglect” of calls to increase benefits for the most vulnerable seniors, especially ethnic elders and women.

We pledged to fight conservative efforts to “privatize” the program for individuals’ Wall Street investment. But in proposing new rules to help workers increase their retirement savings, the president stopped short of supporting stronger benefits for those most in need.

Laudable Measures Announced, But…

Attendees and live-streaming viewers around the country were enthusiastic about several major proposed regulations. One promises to improve quality and safety requirements for the nation’s 15,000 nursing homes. Another proposal would enable very low-income and frail homebound elders and people with disabilities to use food stamps for Meals on Wheels. Key among several Medicare announcements, doctors will be paid starting in 2016, to counsel patients about their end-of-life care options--the same voluntary service that former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin derided six years ago as “death panels.”

But absent was any substantive discussion of hospice and palliative care. An additional new guidance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will reinforce that the agency’s equal-access rule applies to all HUD-subsidized housing, such as Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly, barring discrimination based on “actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or marital status.”

Yet, neither the president nor WHCoA speakers addressed the looming crisis in affordable housing for seniors. For instance, since the height of the Great Recession, the White House and Congress have ended any new Section 202 developments. Furthermore, funding is so small for Section 8 rental vouchers that waiting lists are literally years long, especially in urban areas like Detroit, Oakland orBoston, where elders are being displaced by gentrification, mortgage fraud or other factors.

Housing was only one prime issue left off the dais throughout the day. Because Congress did not fund this WHCoA, as it has in past decades, the current administration decided to hold a scaled-down event with a limited program. But the final agenda--not released until last week--surprised even seasoned observers.

A Third of Speakers Corporate

Mark Miller, retirement columnist for Reuters and Money.com, commented in an e-mail for this article, “I've been surprised, and a little disturbed, to see that the WHCoA was so commercial. My in-box has been flooded all week with story pitches from corporations that participated in some way, who want to use that to their own benefit.

” Monday’s conference had presentations on caregiving, financial security, healthy aging, elder justice (elder abuse prevention) and technology. In fact, three of the day’s 10 talks were focused on tech, emphasizing innovative entrepreneurship. The conference, with 45 speakers plus the president, included 14 corporate speakers from such entities as Airbnb, Uber, Walgreen’s and the American Bankers’ Association. There were also 14 administration personnel. The remaining one-third of speakers ranged from one union representative, a couple of academic experts, and family caregivers, among them television and Broadway star, David Hyde Pierce. Pierce, whose family has dealt with Alzheimer’s disease, proved an adept moderator of the panel on caregiving.

At one point, panel member Ai-jen Poo, of Caring Across Generations, noted that the poorly supported 50 million caregivers in the United States will double by 2050 with the aging of the boomer generation. Not only do those families face looming shortages of geriatric health care professionals, the 2 million direct-care workers now earn merely $13,000 a year on average. In a telling moment, Pierce looked up at numerous audience members with tee shirts advocating a $15 minimum wage for those care workers and quipped, "I keep hoping capitalism will catch up with the need."

It was a sentiment that would echo throughout the day’s program. Giving a stirring presentation was UCLA gerontologist Fernando Torres-Gil, who presided over President Clinton’s 1995 WHCoA as that administration’s Assistant Secretary of Aging. He said, “As our society is becoming more ethnically diverse, the challenge will be to break down the walls of age and diversity.”

The percentage of ethnic Americans 65-plus will double by 2050 to more than four in 10. Research by the MacArthur Foundation and others has exposed inequality in American longevity. Findings show that black males with low educational levels live an average of 14 years less than college-educated white men. And the life-expectancy gap between white women with high and low levels of learning is 10 years. Yet longevity inequality and the intergenerational need for greater educational investment were left off Monday’s WHCoA platform.

Public-Private Partnerships

In addition to announcing a range of federal initiatives, the White House unveiled a series of public-private partnerships. A WHCoA Fact Sheet lists about 30 companies involved in joint projects with government agencies or nonprofits. Speaking on the conference financial-security panel, Bank of America’s Andy Sieg, head of Global Wealth and Retirement Solutions, announced the introduction of the bank’s Merrill Lynch Longevity Training Program for human resources and benefit plan professionals, developed in partnership with the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.

Merrill Lynch will instruct its bankers to provide retirement and benefit plan services to 35,000 companies and more than 5 million employees. Worthy as this program may be, the inclusion of BofA on such a limited program seemed a questionable choice, at least from a White House public relations perspective. Only last fall the Justice Department announced a nearly $17 billion settlement with the corporation over massive mortgage fraud. As recently as this May, the New York Times reported difficulties with the bank’s program under the settlement to meet consumer loan relief provisions.

Another question mark on the WHCoA program was why it devoted the only segment on the vital issue of universal design to a single high-tech company, IDEO, spotlighting the design firm’s launch of its Powerful Now: Positive Aging for All program.

Lacking in the conversation was any mention of such vital concerns as inexpensive, safe and appealing home modification beyond ugly grab bars, with public assistance for older homeowners on fixed incomes; efforts to persuade home builders to design accessible homes from the start; or product design to prevent home injuries, such as fall-prevention work done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Do ‘With, Not For’ Elders

IDEO did present a delightful surprise, staff designer Barbara Beskind, age 91. Accomplishing good design for elders, she said, is doing so “with, not for” older people.

In an awkward moment toward the end of the conference, Kathy Greenlee, who heads the U.S. Administration on Aging, recognized several prominent invitees to ask questions. Wilson Wewa of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs of Oregon, who said he was one of two tribal members in the room. He first called for research at the 566 tribes across Indian Country on elder abuse, “the elephant nobody wants to see.” Wiwa then stated, “Technology is great. I come from a rural area with little towns like Fossil, Ore., that nobody knows about that have 25 people in them. We have reservations that have no electricity. And therefore we don’t have technology. So we have to solve getting computers, technology to rural areas, not only in Indian America, but also through the rest of rural America.”

Greenlee very respectfully interrupted him because time was so short for audience input. Wiwa concluded, “Yes, I just want to say I--I’m asking for help for those areas, and we need to be cognizant that we’re all in this together.”

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http://www.alternet.org/education/why-drive-prepare-students-compete-globally-entirely-misses-pointWhy the Drive to Prepare Students to 'Compete Globally' Entirely Misses the Pointhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/101598414/0/alternet_labor~Why-the-Drive-to-Prepare-Students-to-Compete-Globally-Entirely-Misses-the-Point

We have somehow taken a broad economic problem and turned it into the workers' fault.

On the list of empty rhetoric that's thrown into the ring for the reformster dog and pony show, we should include "compete globally."

This phrase is frequently used as the bottom line for the reformster argument: We need standards so we can raise test scores so we can prove that students are career and college ready. Why? So they can compete globally.

What does that even mean? Compete with which parts of the globe? Compete at what?

There are many areas in which we are not winning global competitions. While Americans go hungry and tons of tons of edible food end up in landfills, France has made it illegal for stores to throw food away. While Americans (and their government) get rich off young people trying to get a college education, many countries recognize the benefits of making it easy to home-grow educated adults with no-cost colleges. And the U.S. remains one of the absolute worst countries in the world for child-care leave. Anything for the children, except letting them have their mothers handy during the first months of life.

And Estonia? That country we're worried about catching up to? I learned this week that it is the leader in free wifi for everybody (instead of preserving it as a private source of corporate profit).

Nevertheless, isn't the U.S. still a major world power? Isn't China still trying to imitate us economically? Are we not among the world's leaders, economically and politically? Also, our women just won the World Cup, so in your face, global competition.

So what do our students need to be doing about competing globally?

When reformsters talk about competing globally, they're generally talking about jobs and economics. Like this sentence that leads off a White House essay about competing globally: "To create true middle-class security, we must out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world, positioning American companies to thrive in a 21st-century economy."

There are two problems here.

The first is the use of the term "American companies." I'm not sure that anybody even knows what that means anymore. GE is a quintessential American company; we can all remember various GE products being advertised no matter how old or young we are. But of GE's roughly 300,000 employees, fewer than half (about 134,000) are in the US. "American" automaker Chrysler barely employs more Americans than "Japanese" Toyota.

Five years ago, when McKinsey was beating the drum at the front of the reformy parade, they weren't even bothering to talk about "American companies" as much as "multinational companies headquartered in the US."

Multinationals owe no allegiance to a particular country, nor to a particular way of life. Robert Reich included this quote in a 2012 look at the issue: An Apple executive says, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”

Nor, for that matter, is Apple obliged to solve China's problems either, and so Apple, like many companies, benefits from a culture in which people sacrifice their lives for a meager paycheck. China's working conditions suck, but that's not the multinational's problem. It is, in fact, to its benefit.

And that brings us to the second problem with the White House statement.

Reformsters repeatedly talk about this global competition as if it's just a matter of education instead of controlling costs. This paper by the Center for American Progress gives exactly one sentence to the issue:

"We are quite familiar with what economists call 'global labor arbitrage,' the substitution of high-wage workers in advanced economy countries with low-wage workers in developing economies."

Having noted their familiarity, the writers spend the rest of the paper speaking as if competitiveness is strictly a matter of education and training, and not a willingness to provide labor at the lowest possible costs.

The examples are endless. GE is sitting on a mountain of money. Yet even as GE has moved jobs to cheaper overseas locations, it has slashed benefits and created a two-tier pay system for its American workers. Does the recent kerfluffle about Microsoft laying off workers while pressing Congress for more guest worker visas seem familiar? That's because we went through the same kerfluffle a year ago. Google "do we need more STEM workers" and watch the arguments line up.

We aren't losing jobs because we can't "out-innovate, out-educate or out-build" the rest of the world, but because we don't have enough people willing to work for far less money in far crappier conditions. (Even if we were, you don't raise people who can out-innovate anyone by forcing students through a one-size-fits-all, test-driven straightjacket of an education program; even China understands that.)

It is true that American students are poorly equipped to compete in a marketplace when they've been told, "I've got 10 Chinese workers willing to live in a dorm away from home and work 80-hour weeks for peanuts. Can you beat that?" But it's not entirely clear how college and career-ready standards, backed up by high-stakes testing fueling a big stick threat-heavy approach to public schools will help.

I can find plenty of writing about the issues in big broad terms, but try as I might, I can't find somebody who lays out the direct connection. I'm 18 and I've proven I can pass a test about literature taught the David Coleman way — what will that allow me to say in a job interview that will make a potential employer say, "Yes, I definitely want to hire you, and not that guy in China."

Exactly what is the connection between passing PARCC and scoring a good middle-class job?

Reformsters keep trying to frame the issue as one of worker worthiness. Surely our American workers would be better paid at better jobs if they deserved to be. The fact that they aren't is proof that they don't deserve to be. I have no doubt that when Jeb Bush says American workers should work more hours, he's displaying the reformster disconnect, not even noticing that 1) vast number of employers won't hire people for more than part-time jobs; and 2) employers just fought hard for their right to screw workers out of overtime pay.

In other words, we have somehow taken a broad economic problem — the human costs of corporations that want to pay absolute bottom dollar for labor — and turned it into the workers' fault. Don't whine to me, Mr. Smith: if you had gotten a better education, working part-time at the widget store would pay better.

The global competition is to scour the globe to find the cheapest good-enough labor to be found so corporate coffers can be crammed full. Multinationals are on their way to reducing national governments to the role of human resources departments — get us a good applicant pool for jobs, take care of healthcare costs and any other maintenance costs for keeping the human capital in working order. And so nations are in a global competition to see which can bring the most good-enough human capital under budget.

Who's going to compete for the job of looking out for the interests of the human capital? Turns out there is no global competition to be best at that job.

We have somehow taken a broad economic problem and turned it into the workers' fault.

On the list of empty rhetoric that's thrown into the ring for the reformster dog and pony show, we should include "compete globally."

This phrase is frequently used as the bottom line for the reformster argument: We need standards so we can raise test scores so we can prove that students are career and college ready. Why? So they can compete globally.

What does that even mean? Compete with which parts of the globe? Compete at what?

There are many areas in which we are not winning global competitions. While Americans go hungry and tons of tons of edible food end up in landfills, France has made it illegal for stores to throw food away. While Americans (and their government) get rich off young people trying to get a college education, many countries recognize the benefits of making it easy to home-grow educated adults with no-cost colleges. And the U.S. remains one of the absolute worst countries in the world for child-care leave. Anything for the children, except letting them have their mothers handy during the first months of life.

And Estonia? That country we're worried about catching up to? I learned this week that it is the leader in free wifi for everybody (instead of preserving it as a private source of corporate profit).

Nevertheless, isn't the U.S. still a major world power? Isn't China still trying to imitate us economically? Are we not among the world's leaders, economically and politically? Also, our women just won the World Cup, so in your face, global competition.

So what do our students need to be doing about competing globally?

When reformsters talk about competing globally, they're generally talking about jobs and economics. Like this sentence that leads off a White House essay about competing globally: "To create true middle-class security, we must out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world, positioning American companies to thrive in a 21st-century economy."

There are two problems here.

The first is the use of the term "American companies." I'm not sure that anybody even knows what that means anymore. GE is a quintessential American company; we can all remember various GE products being advertised no matter how old or young we are. But of GE's roughly 300,000 employees, fewer than half (about 134,000) are in the US. "American" automaker Chrysler barely employs more Americans than "Japanese" Toyota.

Five years ago, when McKinsey was beating the drum at the front of the reformy parade, they weren't even bothering to talk about "American companies" as much as "multinational companies headquartered in the US."

Multinationals owe no allegiance to a particular country, nor to a particular way of life. Robert Reich included this quote in a 2012 look at the issue: An Apple executive says, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”

Nor, for that matter, is Apple obliged to solve China's problems either, and so Apple, like many companies, benefits from a culture in which people sacrifice their lives for a meager paycheck. China's working conditions suck, but that's not the multinational's problem. It is, in fact, to its benefit.

And that brings us to the second problem with the White House statement.

Reformsters repeatedly talk about this global competition as if it's just a matter of education instead of controlling costs. This paper by the Center for American Progress gives exactly one sentence to the issue:

"We are quite familiar with what economists call 'global labor arbitrage,' the substitution of high-wage workers in advanced economy countries with low-wage workers in developing economies."

Having noted their familiarity, the writers spend the rest of the paper speaking as if competitiveness is strictly a matter of education and training, and not a willingness to provide labor at the lowest possible costs.

The examples are endless. GE is sitting on a mountain of money. Yet even as GE has moved jobs to cheaper overseas locations, it has slashed benefits and created a two-tier pay system for its American workers. Does the recent kerfluffle about Microsoft laying off workers while pressing Congress for more guest worker visas seem familiar? That's because we went through the same kerfluffle a year ago. Google "do we need more STEM workers" and watch the arguments line up.

We aren't losing jobs because we can't "out-innovate, out-educate or out-build" the rest of the world, but because we don't have enough people willing to work for far less money in far crappier conditions. (Even if we were, you don't raise people who can out-innovate anyone by forcing students through a one-size-fits-all, test-driven straightjacket of an education program; even China understands that.)

It is true that American students are poorly equipped to compete in a marketplace when they've been told, "I've got 10 Chinese workers willing to live in a dorm away from home and work 80-hour weeks for peanuts. Can you beat that?" But it's not entirely clear how college and career-ready standards, backed up by high-stakes testing fueling a big stick threat-heavy approach to public schools will help.

I can find plenty of writing about the issues in big broad terms, but try as I might, I can't find somebody who lays out the direct connection. I'm 18 and I've proven I can pass a test about literature taught the David Coleman way — what will that allow me to say in a job interview that will make a potential employer say, "Yes, I definitely want to hire you, and not that guy in China."

Exactly what is the connection between passing PARCC and scoring a good middle-class job?

Reformsters keep trying to frame the issue as one of worker worthiness. Surely our American workers would be better paid at better jobs if they deserved to be. The fact that they aren't is proof that they don't deserve to be. I have no doubt that when Jeb Bush says American workers should work more hours, he's displaying the reformster disconnect, not even noticing that 1) vast number of employers won't hire people for more than part-time jobs; and 2) employers just fought hard for their right to screw workers out of overtime pay.

In other words, we have somehow taken a broad economic problem — the human costs of corporations that want to pay absolute bottom dollar for labor — and turned it into the workers' fault. Don't whine to me, Mr. Smith: if you had gotten a better education, working part-time at the widget store would pay better.

The global competition is to scour the globe to find the cheapest good-enough labor to be found so corporate coffers can be crammed full. Multinationals are on their way to reducing national governments to the role of human resources departments — get us a good applicant pool for jobs, take care of healthcare costs and any other maintenance costs for keeping the human capital in working order. And so nations are in a global competition to see which can bring the most good-enough human capital under budget.

Who's going to compete for the job of looking out for the interests of the human capital? Turns out there is no global competition to be best at that job.

Hillary Clinton showed she can evolve on the issue. Conservatives, not so much.

Very few conservatives actually heard what Hillary Clinton said in her big economic speech on Monday, writes Paul Krugman in Friday's column. While many were too busy shouting "Benghazi," others just did not want to hear her core message about how the federal government should help push minimum wage higher.

That is, of course, heresy to conservatives, who firmly believe that Reagan proved that the federal government should never intervene in the free market.

So Krugman sets out to bring people's understanding of what determines wages up to date, homework which Clinton seems to have done.

Many economists used to think of the labor market as being pretty much like the market for anything else, with the prices of different kinds of labor — that is, wage rates — fully determined by supply and demand. So if wages for many workers have stagnated or declined, it must be because demand for their services is falling.

In particular, the conventional wisdom attributed rising inequality to technological change, which was raising the demand for highly educated workers while devaluing blue-collar work. And there was nothing much policy could do to change the trend, other than aiding low-wage workers via subsidies like the earned-income tax credit.

You still see commentators who haven’t kept up invoking this story as if it were obviously true. But the case for “skill-biased technological change” as the main driver of wage stagnation has largely fallen apart. Most notably, high levels of education have offered no guarantee of rising incomes — for example, wages of recent college graduates, adjusted for inflation, have been flat for 15 years.

Two studies inform the discussion: One is not even new. Economists David Card and Alan Krueger began studying what happens to the labor market when individual states raise the minimum wage twenty years ago. "Until the Card-Krueger study, most economists, myself included, assumed that raising the minimum wage would have a clear negative effect on employment," Krugman confesses. "But they found, if anything, a positive effect. Their result has since been confirmed using data from many episodes. There’s just no evidence that raising the minimum wage costs jobs, at least when the starting point is as low as it is in modern America."

To Krugman, and other reasonable people, this indicates that the labor market does not perform like every other market, primarily because workers are people. They do a better job when treated well, have better morale and more productivity. That is good for business! By way of example, look at the Walmart model of high turnover and terrible morale versus that of Costco.

In fact, Krugman suggests, increasing wages as a way to improve business outcomes is not limited to the meagerly paid minimum wage labor force.

Reality bites for those conservatives who continue to cling to outdated notions.

Hillary Clinton showed she can evolve on the issue. Conservatives, not so much.

Very few conservatives actually heard what Hillary Clinton said in her big economic speech on Monday, writes Paul Krugman in Friday's column. While many were too busy shouting "Benghazi," others just did not want to hear her core message about how the federal government should help push minimum wage higher.

That is, of course, heresy to conservatives, who firmly believe that Reagan proved that the federal government should never intervene in the free market.

So Krugman sets out to bring people's understanding of what determines wages up to date, homework which Clinton seems to have done.

Many economists used to think of the labor market as being pretty much like the market for anything else, with the prices of different kinds of labor — that is, wage rates — fully determined by supply and demand. So if wages for many workers have stagnated or declined, it must be because demand for their services is falling.

In particular, the conventional wisdom attributed rising inequality to technological change, which was raising the demand for highly educated workers while devaluing blue-collar work. And there was nothing much policy could do to change the trend, other than aiding low-wage workers via subsidies like the earned-income tax credit.

You still see commentators who haven’t kept up invoking this story as if it were obviously true. But the case for “skill-biased technological change” as the main driver of wage stagnation has largely fallen apart. Most notably, high levels of education have offered no guarantee of rising incomes — for example, wages of recent college graduates, adjusted for inflation, have been flat for 15 years.

Two studies inform the discussion: One is not even new. Economists David Card and Alan Krueger began studying what happens to the labor market when individual states raise the minimum wage twenty years ago. "Until the Card-Krueger study, most economists, myself included, assumed that raising the minimum wage would have a clear negative effect on employment," Krugman confesses. "But they found, if anything, a positive effect. Their result has since been confirmed using data from many episodes. There’s just no evidence that raising the minimum wage costs jobs, at least when the starting point is as low as it is in modern America."

To Krugman, and other reasonable people, this indicates that the labor market does not perform like every other market, primarily because workers are people. They do a better job when treated well, have better morale and more productivity. That is good for business! By way of example, look at the Walmart model of high turnover and terrible morale versus that of Costco.

In fact, Krugman suggests, increasing wages as a way to improve business outcomes is not limited to the meagerly paid minimum wage labor force.

Reality bites for those conservatives who continue to cling to outdated notions.